


A Lighter Shade of Grey

by Hagar



Series: Stubborn, Silent and Grey [6]
Category: NCIS
Genre: Beware the nice ones, Bombings, Canon Typical Violence, Case Fic, Coffee, Geek Characters, Gen, Hackers, Human Intelligence, Inspired by Real Events, Israeli Characters, Male Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Novella, POV Multiple, Political Asylum, Season/Series 11, Snark, Team Dynamics, Terrorists, Where in the world is Ziva David?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-07 10:05:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1118599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hagar/pseuds/Hagar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim’s plans for the weekend had included showing Anat and Effie around the city, and a nice dinner with Delilah. The dinner may yet happen - if Team Gibbs and Anat can catch the local Hamas cell in time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Law for the Justice

**Author's Note:**

> If you didn’t read _Messing About with Boats_ you are probably going to be lost. Same to _Small Joys_. _All Quiet on the Eastern Front_ is recommended, but not necessary.
> 
> The story is complete and will update weekly on Saturdays, late morning to early afternoon GMT (morning EST).
> 
>  **Love and gratitude to:** Aoife (Arabic), N. (research support) and Sailor Sol (beta’ing and general support).
> 
>  **Content advisory:** one explosion, one SWAT raid, and assorted colourful swearing in Hebrew and Arabic.

_“Can't see the hurt for the fixes_   
_Can't see the wall for the borders_   
_Can't find a friend for the niceness_   
_Can't find the law for the justice”_   
_-[Pointless](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo271YwmBPk), Teapacks_

* * *

 

_Thursday, August 15_

 

_16:00_

 

“Why doesn’t the airport shop have the good halva?”

McGee sighed and leaned forward in his chair. “Seriously, Effie? That’s what you called me half across the world for?”

“No, I called you because I’m bored. The airport is boring.”

“Which is exactly how we like airports. And it doesn’t matter what halva the shop has, you only like that one place at Machne Yehuda market.”

“It’s all Elit! It’s not even Barake!”

“Buy Bamba,” Tim advised.

“My suitcase is full of Bamba,” Effie retorted.

“Yes,” Tim agreed, “but your girlfriend has been complaining that the Bamba here is not fresh. After she’d harassed half a dozen FBI agents until the found one who knows where to find Bamba in DC.”

“You know where to find Bamba in DC,” Effie pointed out.

It was Tim’s turn to retort, “Yes, and I’m not at the FBI-Shin-Beit workshop. Just buy the Bamba, Effie. She’ll love you for it tomorrow morning.”

“I don’t need to bribe her with Bamba for that.”

“Fine. I’ll love you for it.”

“I love it when you beg. You should write it into your next book.”

“Effie -” Tim began, but she’d already hung up. Of course.

Tony was giving Tim a very certain smile. “Trouble in paradise already, Timmy?”

At least Tony finally got tired of calling him _McThreesome_ ,Tim figured. “No, just the usual care and feeding of Israelis.”

“Speaking of the care and feeding of Israelis, where are you taking Anat tonight?”

Tim had deliberately put off informing Tony of his dinner plans. However, he was almost out of time, and not telling Tony would be worse. “Moby Dick’s.”

“That is a bad idea, McGee. _Bad_ idea.”

And that was why Tim would’ve preferred it if he didn’t have to tell Tony. “Do you have a better one, Tony?” Tim asked. His tone said, _You’re being annoying._

“Steak. Indian. Chinese. Empanadas,” Tony listed off. “Anything, except Middle Eastern.”

Dorneget raised a hesitant hand. “But you like falafel,” he said to Tony.

“Yes, I do, Dorneget,” Tony replied. “But that is not the point. The point is that taking an Israeli to eat shawarma outside of Israel is just going to end very, very badly.”

“Taking an Israeli out to eat _anything_ is liable to go badly, if you’re in America,” Tim pointed out. “Have you ever known an Israeli to _not_ complain about what we Americans to do our food?”

It was true. The United States of America had a lot of things wrong with it, the food definitely being one of those - though possibly not quite as bad as the healthcare system - but, still, not all American food was bad. And yet, you could just not convince any Israeli of it. Tim liked Anat dearly, but he did not look forward to feeding her.

“True,” Tony agreed, “but taking an Israeli out to eat food she knows from home is the worst idea.”

“If this was her first day here, probably,” Tim agreed. He did think about that, no matter what Tony seemed to think. “But the FBI has been feeding her for the past three days. I’m hoping she’ll be just about ready for a break.”

Tony shuddered dramatically at the mention of the FBI. “Point.”

“Thank you, Tony.”

And because Tony couldn’t make anything easy, he followed up with: “How come I’m not invited but Delilah is?”

Tim winced and looked around, hoping that Abby wasn’t anywhere near. “Actually, tonight was going to be just Anat and me. We’ll do the double-date thing on the weekend, with Effie. Now, you’re welcome to join us tonight and hear Anat bitch about idiot FBI agents who she just needed to teach procedures she’s known since she was nineteen,” Anat had been abusing her access to secure lines and calling Tim to bitch each night for the past three days, “or you can come on Saturday and meet Effie.”

“Well, McGee, when you put it like that…”

Tim rolled his eyes, and got back to work for two more hours.

 

* * *

 

_18:00_

 

Anat eyed the restaurant dubiously. “That cannot possibly be a shawarmiya.”

“It’s not a shawarmiya,” Tim said patiently, mentally swearing around the too-close syllables. “It’s a Middle Eastern restaurant.”

Anat didn’t seem convinced. “It looks too fancy.”

Because of course that would be her problem. It hadn’t occurred to Tim that Moby Dick’s might seem too fancy for Anat, after three days at whatever fancy hotel the FBI had chosen to host the conference. This explained why she needed so badly to change out of the blouse and khakis and into the camisole and shorts she was presently wearing.

“It’s really not fancy,” Tim said, trying to sound reassuring. “It’s a chain restaurant. It’s a local chain, but it’s still just a chain restaurant. It’s,” Tim paused, trying to locate the right parallel. “It’s like Achla. Really. And they make the shishkebab without yogurt.”

That was his winning ticket - most Middle Eastern restaurants in DC had the tendency to make the meat Greek-style, with yogurt. Anat wasn’t observant, not exactly, but she wouldn’t eat anywhere that served meat with dairy.

Anat went silent and kept walking, though she still looked grumpy and suspicious. Tim wasn’t particularly worried. Complain was what Anat did when she was tired, and having to put up with Americans who outnumbered her twenty-to-one had to be no fun at all. Anat’s natural compassion and open nature made her significantly easier to work with than most Shin-Beit personnel - than most _Israelis,_ if Tim was frank - but that didn’t imply any greater ability on her part to understand Americans, only a greater ability to not make them cry. And Anat had been short-tempered for the past two months, anyway: she was still adjusting to being Chief of the Raffah desk. Tim fully expected Anat to be a grouch, and wasn’t going to start worrying unless she was still in a foul temper after they’d had baklava. And coffee. Coffee was always go-

Everything went white.

He hadn’t been thrown to the pavement. Tim blinked away spots. His entire body was sore. His ears were ringing, but he could still hear: not screams, not yet. The street was a mess, he registered as his vision cleared; the restaurant’s glass front had been thoroughly smashed.

The screams started.

There’d been an explosion.

 _Where_ was Anat?

McGee scanned around even as he pulled out his cell phone - to call Gibbs or 911, he hadn’t decided yet. Those people who weren’t running in hysterics were frozen with it. No one was lying on the ground, he noticed; only one car had been seriously damaged in the explosion, and it was still burning. The bomb couldn’t have been that big, then. Except…

He was missing something. Tim knew that, but he had no idea what that was. This wasn’t his thing.

Where the hell was Anat?

Someone else had called 911; Tim put his phone back in his pocket and went in search of the missing analyst instead. She’d been standing right next to him when the bomb went off. DC had had too many bombings and this was going to be bad even if they didn’t manage to lose an Israeli intel analyst on the scene. She’d been standing right next to him; no one appeared to be seriously hurt; this made no sense.

He had to cross the street over to the restaurant before he could see her. She was standing next to the still-burning car. Tim rushed over and grabbed her arm. “Anat, get _back -_ ”

She shook him off, not even sparing him a look. “Get a team, we need the area taped off -”

“Anat, you need to step back from the burning car.” Tim tried to get her away from the flames. No luck. She was locked on.

“The explosion originated from this car. Shape charge,” she indicated the broken glass on one side of the burning car versus the clean street on its other side. “Remote detonation,” she gestured at the car - presumably at the lack of bodies inside it. “We need a vetted medical team - one of the bodies inside will be the target.”

If Tim looked at the restaurant, really looked, he could see what were probably bodies under upturned tables and broken glass, thrown back by the explosion. _Shape charge._

Anat had to have run straight at the burning car before Tim even regained his senses.

 _Shape charge._ That was what he’d been missing. He tried to keep his focus on that as he pulled out his cell phone again, to call Gibbs. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

“Look at the other cars, they’re -”

“Anat, I -” _believe you,_ he was going to say, but then Gibbs picked up with a gruff _Yeah._ “Boss, I need a full MCRT team here and Ducky and Palmer, too” Tim said. “Anat and I are at the Moby Dick’s in Arlington, 3000 Washington Boulevard. There’s been an explosion.”

“Moby Dick?” Gibbs demanded. “Isn’t that the Middle Eastern place, McGee?”

“Yes, boss, it is,” Tim confirmed. “Boss - it might be a shape charge.”

Gibbs hung up.

Thankfully, Tim knew his boss well enough to interpret that as _We’ll be right there._ “They’re on their way,” he told Anat.

“Kibalti,” she answered distantly and in Hebrew. _Roger_. She was still standing too close to the burning car, still not looking at him, her back straight and her feet planted at shoulder-width. Tim knew that body language: Anat was standing as if she was in uniforms and the scene was hers to command. Tim wanted to pull her out of there, badly. But - he looked at the restaurant instead. Not everybody had run off or was dead. The ambulances would be there in moments, but, in the meantime, Tim walked into the glass-covered floor, pulling his jacket off as he did so.

 

* * *

 

Gibbs assessed the scene as he drove the truck in. The cars parked three spots down from the blackened wreck were unharmed. This bombing had not been designed to kill as many as possible; quite the opposite. Everything about the scene screamed that this was anything but random. But then, this was why Gibbs was driving the ME’s truck: getting Ducky first on the scene had won Gibbs more than one case before. And if this was targeted and the target was a person, then the dead body - or bodies - were the most precious piece of evidence.

“Goodness gracious, Jethro,” Ducky muttered as he made his way off the truck. Palmer just looked extra pale. Gibbs only spared them a cursory glance - he took a few sharp turns, but none that were actually hadn’t sharp enough to give anybody whiplash - and continued to scan the scene instead. DiNozzo and whoever he’d grabbed would be there in minutes, and in the meantime -

There, at the back of one of the ambulances. Gibbs strode purposefully towards where McGee and Mejaled were arguing. McGee was covered in blood and missing his jacket. He had a bandage on one forearm and his face was covered in dirt, but otherwise he seemed unharmed to Gibbs’ eye. Mejaled’s hands were dirty as well. She had something white in her hand - balled-up wipes, Gibbs reasons. She held them loosely, though, not making any effort to wipe the soot off her hands. Her body was mostly operations-relaxed, too, but she held her head high and her neck very straight, constantly craning it to keep tracking the scene.

“Boss, thank God you’re here,” McGee said. He sounded exasperated, high-strung and worn. “Will you tell Anat that she needs to go the hospital, please?”

Mejaled looked about as irritated as a wet cat. So that was what she and Tim were arguing about. Gibbs looked at the medic whose very posture screamed that this was a colossal waste of his time. “Do they need to go to the hospital?” Gibbs asked, indicating both McGee and Mejaled with his head.

“No,” the medic replied shortly.

“Toda be’emet,” Mejaled bit out. She hopped off the edge of the ambulance.

Gibbs put a firm hand over her shoulder - that camisole didn’t give any spare fabric to grab. “That doesn’t mean you get a run of the scene, Mejaled. DiNozzo’s got that. There they are.” The MCRT truck and two sedans pulled up outside Metro’s tape. This number of agents was possibly overkill, but every agency in DC was still jumpy from the ballroom bombing, and NCIS more than most, what with Secretary Jarvis’ death.

Mejaled subsided. Barely. She gave a curt nod and stayed put, but her body was still screaming tension, masquerading as the controlled calm of an ops-trained person.

Something about this seemed off to Gibbs, not quite adding up, and it wasn’t just because he knew her operations experience to be from the perspective of Command rather than hands-on. He wasn’t sure what was wrong, but just because he couldn’t pinpoint it _yet_ didn’t mean that he was wrong. He turned his attention to McGee. “You all right, McGee?”

“Yes, boss. Just my ears still ringing, but not like I busted my eardrums. This can hold.”

“That’s an awful lot of blood.”

“Not mine, boss,” McGee replied automatically.

The medic growled something appreciative-sounding which confirmed Gibbs’ suspicion of what became of McGee’s jacket.

“All right, you two,” Gibbs said, fixing both of them with a glare. “Hospital or not, you’re still getting out of here. Let’s g-”

He turned around, and straight into Tobias Fornell, arms crossed on his chest and three FBI agents standing in formation behind him.

“Fancy meeting you here, Jethro,” Fornell said. “Are you taking custody of my guest?”

Gibbes raised his eyebrows. “Your guest, Tobias?”

“Well, the Bureau’s guest,” Fornell conceded.

Right. Were the Bureau just nervous about appearing as if they almost lost an Israeli Intel guest, or was more than that going on? It compounded Gibbs’ dislike of the situation.

“And here I thought your conference was over.”

Fornell looked defensive, but in a way that suggested that, yes, the Bureau was just running around in hysterics.

Mejaled muttered something in a Hebrew-Arabic mix which had McGee appearing constipated and facepalming. She placed herself between Gibbs and Fornell and pushed each of them a step back, seemingly oblivious to how she barely even reached Fornell’s shoulder.

“Stop with the territoriality wars,” she said, in the no-nonsense voice of military officers everywhere.

Gibbs raised his arms. So did Fornell, who also said: “Until the nature of this attack is clarified, the Bureau would feel better if…”

Mejaled cut him off, her tone brooking no argument. “I’m safe with Gibbs and his people. If my bosses sit on you, tell them to talk to me. That all?”

“Well, this case is not really NCIS’s jurisdiction,” Fornell said, but Gibbs knew that tone; indeed, Fornell followed that up with: “But given that I know better than to argue with Doctor Mallard and I noticed his truck on scene, I believe that we can work something out.”

“I believe we can, Tobias,” Gibbs replied mildly. Fornell shot him an irritated glare. Gibbs continued as if he didn’t. “Agent DiNozzo’s over there, if you’d like to help. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to take statements from my two _witnesses_ here.”

 

* * *

 

 _Talk about coming back with a blast,_ Tony thought as he stood on the sidewalk, keeping an eye on the agents and crime scene technicians processing the scene. Some of the same people had processed the ballroom bombing barely a month before. Tony himself had been absent from that one, of course; Tim and he had only been reinstated in the wake of that, after Parsons withdrew his condemnation of Team Gibbs.

Four weeks before, Tony was still trying to figure out what else to do with his life. Now he was back to being MCRT’s most senior agent other than Gibbs; it was entirely possible that his career would end up benefitting from this mess with Parsons. And yet, even as he maintained command of the scene, Tony had to struggle to keep breathing, and not just because he’d be happier if he’d never needed to breathe the aftermath of an explosion ever again.

Ziva could have her badge back, too, but Ziva was taking what was possibly the first extended vacation of her life and didn’t seem particularly inclined to return any quicker than she absolutely had to - and Vance hadn’t found it in himself to make her an ultimatum, yet.

It was all good. It was supposed to be good. Something about it was absolutely wrong, and Tony couldn’t figure out what.

“Do you think it’s connected?” Dorneget asked hesitatingly.

“What is, probie?” Tony asked distractedly. He was getting to like Dorneget; kid had had the guts to prank Tony right back instead of sulking for three years like certain people, and he seemed to understand that Tony still called him “probie” despite that he’d stopped being a probie months before because Tony liked him. Kid wasn’t all that bad, despite his tendency to look at Tony as if he’d hung the moon in the sky.

“This explosion, and…” Dorneget trailed off.

“Nah,” Tony replied. He felt comfortable enough making that statement. “Ballroom was a high-profile target and a big, messy bomb. That one was meant to intimidate. This was something else. Focused. Different kind of a target.” He shook his head. “We really need to break people out of the idea that they can keep bombing our capitol city, though. Nasty habit, that.”

Four weeks later, they weren’t anywhere nearer catching whoever had killed Secretary Jarvis than they were when Tony got that phone call. He really hoped they were going to have better luck with this one.

 _No,_ Tony decided as he watched Ducky and Palmer walk away with the last of the bodies. _This time, we’re going to make ourselves a better luck._

 

* * *

 

_19:30_

 

He’d promised Kayla and Jared that he’d be home for dinner. He’d promised. It wouldn’t be the first time he didn’t deliver. Leon didn’t make those promises lightly, not anymore. It was more important to be honest with his children and, more often than not, the truthful answer was: “I don’t know.” This day, though - he’d really thought he could make it. He really did. Then he’d stepped out of his office, briefcase in hand, and immediately knew that something was wrong.

And so Leon Vance turned around, went back into his office - might as well get more paperwork done - and waited for Pamela to tell him that Gibbs, DiNozzo or both returned to the Navy Yard.

When Gibbs stepped out of the elevator, Vance was already watching from the top of the platform. He wanted to be down there. Intellectually he knew that Gibbs had never been at risk, that McGee had nothing worse than a scratch, but that knowledge didn’t run all the way through. It didn’t used to be like this, but Jackie’s loss had knocked some things open that Leon had kept locked up tight for most of his adult life.

He waited on top of the platform. When Gibbs stepped out of the elevator, his eyes didn’t travel up to search for Leon. Instead, he honed in on Patty Wu, the junior agent DiNozzo had left with the run of the floor - which, coming from DiNozzo rushing to the scene of an explosion, was a vote of trust. Wu took one look at the grimy Mejaled, and extracted her overnight bag before she approached Gibbs, McGee and Mejaled.

Gibbs glanced up briefly while McGee and Wu argued with Mejaled - not a long argument - but did not glance up again until after Wu and Mejaled disappeared in the direction of the bathroom, and McGee was settled at his desk with a Nutter Butter and a cup of coffee. Then, Gibbs came galloping up the stairs.

“You should be long home, Leon.”

Vance said nothing; Gibbs, of all agents, knew damn well why Leon had waited on him.

After a moment, Gibbs said: “Everyone’s fine. It’s not related. DiNozzo’s bossing around the FBI, and Fornell’s letting him.”

“The FBI?”

“Mejaled’s their guest. They were worried.”

“I see she came home with us.”

“She has _opinions_.”

“I wouldn’t have imagined,” Vance said dryly. “Joint investigation, I take it?”

Gibbs tilted his head slightly. “The Bureau’s better than the alternative.”

“There’s an understatement.” Not that the Bureau could keep the Israelis out of it, if Morrow’s intel was true, but at least the Bureau would take the bulk of Israeli Security’s wrath, rather than NCIS. “So what _is_ this about?”

“I’ll let you know when Ducky IDs those bodies.”

Someone wanted someone else dead, and a bomb was the weapon of choice. _Assassination._  “How many?”

“Three. They were right on top of the bomb when it went off.” Gibbs grimaced.

Vance understood; the bodies may not be easy to identify. “All the more reason to be glad for the FBI’s involvement.” The FBI would come in handy if they needed to follow the bomb-maker on this one.

Gibbs just grunted. “Go home, Leon. Nothing’s gonna happen tonight that’s worth it.”

Leon nodded, and started in the direction of the stairs. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 

* * *

 

_21:00_

 

They didn’t really need to talk about it. They talked about it anyway, because Tim needed for everything to be asked and replied to. So Anat said yes, it made more sense to stay at Tim’s and yes, they’d pass through the hotel anyway. And also, she added, she needed to talk to Patty the next day and find out where that shirt came from, because it was a very nice shirt.

“What is it?” Tim asked. They were riding the elevator up from the parking garage to Tim’s floor.

“I’m still smelling smoke. But we both changed clothes.”

“Your hair,” he pointed out.

She blinked. “Point.”

“One could almost believe it was your first scene of explosion.”

“It _was_ my first explosion on the ground.”

“You’re just secretly a scary adrenaline junky?”

“I had work to do,” she pointed out.

“Scary adrenaline junky,” he muttered. The elevator door opened. “You go _finally_ wash that scent out. I’ll order us some pizza.”

“On nom nom.”

Predictably, that made Tim smile.

By the time she got out of the shower - smelling of Tim’s soap, but her own shampoo - Tim was already into his second slice of pizza. Anat pulled herself a chair, tucked her feet under her, and got to eating. Half a pizza later, she noted: “You’re really quiet.”

“And you were really hungry.”

She still was. She’d ended up eating most of a large pizza. It’d been a while since she’d been able to finish more than a half by herself.

They were supposed to only get up at eight the next morning, pick Effie up from the airport at ten, and spend the day playing tourist. _Supposed_ was the name of a fish, and that was not going to happen. “We need to be at Reagan at ten,” she said between bites.

Tim nodded. “I was going to suggest that you sleep in late and I’ll round back to pick you up, but frankly I’ll be first in line to take off my own head. Then I was going to suggest that I call in late, but it occurred to me there is no way I can convince you to sleep late tomorrow.”

She nodded. “So, six-thirty?”

Tim sighed. “Anat - you know it’s not your case, right? It’s not even mine, either - we’re both witnesses.”

It was a hunch. It was just a hunch. There were a gazillion reasons someone might plant a bomb to kill someone. Even in Israel, criminals did it, not only terrorists - many more criminals than terrorists, since the Second Intifada puttered out. There were many people - many kinds of people - who went to that sort of a restaurant. This could be any of a million things, none of which were in any way even related to Anat’s responsibilities. It was entirely possible that by the time she and Tim walked into the office the next day, the dead bodies would already be identified and their identities would take this case off NCIS’ hands. It was entirely possible.

Anat may have seen something. She’d believed it enough to run to the origin point of the explosion, against all protocol, not knowing if there may or may not be a second bomb. It might not matter. She might be wrong, and then nothing ever happened, and not a word needed to be said.

She believed that she wasn’t wrong.

“Anat?” Tim asked. “What is it?”

She shook her head. She couldn’t tell him, not even that she might’ve seen something, not until this was proven. But she couldn’t make herself say _Just tired,_ either, because there was a good chance that it would prove to be a lie. There were things she didn’t talk about, but she’d never flat-out lied to Tim, before.

He had the sense to not ask again.

 

* * *

 

_23:30_

 

His apartment was quiet and dimly lit when he stepped into it, which was just how Tony liked it. The new, bullet-resistant and very much whole windows glinted softly. Tony neutralized the alarm, shrugged off his jacket, kicked off his shoes and made directly for the kitchen. What he found in his fridge was not encouraging. After some consideration, Tony took the pasta and some vegetables out of the fridge and left them on the counter to reach room temperature while he went to wash off the crime scene.

On the way back to the kitchen he also turned the computer back on, but he forced himself to fix the pasta salad before logging into his email and chats accounts. Over the past months he’d developed a special hatred for being offline. Ziva schedule was, best that Tony could tell, completely erratic. There was no knowing when she’d make contact, and whether it would be an email, a chat conversation, or one of the rare voice chats. Yael was only slightly more predictable; her hours were around five in the afternoon EDT, or around ten at night. Those translated to midnight and five in the morning on Israel-time, so Tony figured that, like him, she checked her email when she got home and before she left each morning. He had less to actually _tell_ her since Ziva had been gone, but he’d gotten into the habit of sending her stuff that caught his eye on 9gag; she retaliated with, of all things, baby animals. Tony tried very hard to not project, to not imagine that Yael engaged in this contact for the same reasons he did. That was probably how he was meant to feel; he couldn’t afford to forget that though Yael seemed to care for Ziva, she’d also allowed for Ziva - and Tony - to be kidnapped and held for prudential reasons.

The salad made, Tony hesitated. Usually he tried to not eat in front of his computer. It was a constant effort to remember to eat, and to remember to eat in a way that didn’t make him feel and look like shit after a week. But it was late, and Tony could expect a very full day the next day - _today,_ he thought ruefully, looking at the time. Mind made up, he took his dinner to the computer.

There was nothing interesting in his usual email accounts - the usual mix of commercial content, and chain letters from his old frat buddies whom he hadn’t seen in forever. Nothing from Ziva. He logged out, and began the painstaking process of logging into the Samuel Jones address.

He had one new message from Suzanne Cohen. It wasn’t animal pictures; it was a Youtube link. Tony leaned back against the couch. There was a 50% chance that it would turn out to be a cat video. There was also a 50% chance that it was an actual _message._

Almost two weeks before, Tony had excised eight seconds of background noise from one of his now-rare voice chats with Ziva. He could make out people’s voices and some sort of music. It sounded like he’d expect Africa to sound, but then, Ziva hadn’t tried to hide that she was in Africa. She just didn’t say _where_ in Africa. Knowing Ziva, that made Tony worry. He’d sent the voice clip to Yael, hoping for - he wasn’t sure. He’d been berating himself for it on and off since. Yael wasn’t the one expected to give up information in this exchange. There’d been a video of a cat sleeping on a Bordeaux Mastiff’s head since, so at least he knew that she wasn’t pissed with him, but that was all.

He clicked on the link.

It wasn’t a cat video; it was a music video.

 _Katy Perry, seriously?_ Tony thought as he let it roll. And, okay, he’d sent her a 1980s Eurovision link almost half a year before, but did she have to retaliate with Katy Perry? At least it wasn’t _Firework._

Maybe she _was_ pissed with him, he thought as the tiger took out the idiot pilot but, not a minute later, the video got a whole lot more animals, none of them the man-eating kind. Perhaps he should rethink this one as a musical cat video.

 _We need to do something about your musical taste,_ he wrote back. _Like, get you one._ He thought about it for a moment, and added: _Eggplants are the bomb._

Oversized musical cat-vid or not, these were still the brightest four minutes of his day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Let's pretend that the video for Katy Perry's Roar came out a couple months before it did, okay?  
> \- Shawarmiya: a place that serves shawarma, only or primarily  
> \- Kibalti: "Received", first person singular. The full form on radio comm would be "Rut, kibalti", which is idiomatically identical to "Roger" in that context.  
> \- "Toda be'emet": idiomatically "Jee, thanks". Literally "Thanks, really."


	2. Fog

_“Midnight in the village_  
 _The moon lights up my past_  
 _And in the alleyways, a soldier is still praying_

_It smells like a fire_   
_And it’s hard to see_   
_The thick coat of fog that sticks to us”_

_-[Midnight in the village](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkjnadCaosk), Har’el Moyal_

* * *

 

_Friday, August 16, 2013_

 

_06:30_

 

Gibbs fully expected to not be the first to arrive that morning. What he didn’t expect was for Ned Dorneget to be the one at his desk, two paper cups next to his keyboard McGee-style. His eyes were red-rimmed and he looked as if he wasn’t used to this - which he indeed wasn’t - but his expression was stubbornly set as he handed Gibbs a thin stack of papers.

“We have a tentative ID on two of the victims from yesterday evening,” he said. “Alex Bradanovic, 19, local, and Sharon O'Donoghue, 23, from upstate New York. Alex and Sharon were together. He told his parents that’s where the two of them were going and now they can’t find him. Physical characteristics of two of the bodies match the two missing persons. Sharon’s mom Heather is on her way down here to give a DNA sample.”

It went unsaid that Heather O’Donoghue might have somewhere close to home at which to give a DNA sample; but chances were that Sharon would not be coming home, and in that case they would need Heather on the ground in DC.

Gibbs flicked through the papers - what they had on the two presumed identities of the victims, as well as the physical results on the bodies - nodded, and continued to his desk.

“Agent McGee called,” Dorneget continued. “He and Officer Mejaled are on their way and should be here -” pause, as Dorneget glanced at the time, “- soon.”

Gibbs paused, still standing, and considered the junior agent again. “You been here all night, Dorneget?”

“Yes, sir. I was still here when the Bradanovics first made contact, and after that I just figured - I figured I’d stay on it, sir.”

Under most circumstances, Dorneget wouldn’t have been Gibbs’ first choice for a fourth team member. Vance had insisted they had to have someone, though. Dorneget could be trained from scratch to Gibbs’ liking; DiNozzo and McGee had figured they could at the very least tolerate Dorneget even on the bad days - and Dorneget showed a considerable ability to tolerate them in return, even way back when DiNozzo was deliberately trying to run him off. Gibbs was aware that his team was still rattled, still off-balance; ‘tolerable’ was a step up from the crying hysterics he knew both DiNozzo and himself to be capable of sending many agents into. Dorneget has been keeping up over the past month, but very nearly everything that came his way nowadays was his first of its kind. This case was no exception.

“Good job,” Gibbs said, and waited to see Dorneget’s expression clear before he sat down.

 

* * *

 

_06:50 EDT_

 

The plane touched down at JFK at first light. Then she’d gotten stuck at the passport control queue, because apparently JFK’s Arrivals at six in the morning was like Ben Gurion’s departures at two in the morning: packed to capacity and then some. At least she’d managed to get to the head of the queue of the several hundred passengers her flight contained. And because the US wasn’t a sane country - and wasn’t a free country, and wasn’t that just rich coming from the girlfriend of a career Shin-Beit employee - being first in line was a priority given the timing of her connection, and that meant that Effie didn’t get to check messages on her phone until she was past passports, past baggage claims, and waiting in the customs queue.

Then again, she didn’t expect to find any messages.

As the idiom went, expectations were for pillows. Effie had two new messages: from from Anat and one from Tim.

Anat’s text was from the afternoon of the day before, perhaps an hour after Effie had gotten on her flight. It said, _HaKol Beseder._ Effie hissed, equal parts grateful and frustrated that no one around her would recognize that as the beginning of a _kuss emek._ She was going to rip Anat a new one for that. _Everything’s fine_ was the sort of thing you said when everything was most definitely _not_ fine, but the hospital wasn’t looking to keep you for overnight. Anat hadn’t followed that up, which Effie didn’t like one bit. Anat wouldn’t go radio-silent on her unless something was seriously wrong.

And because that wasn’t a bad enough sign right there, there was Tim’s message that had only come in ten minutes before. The message said, _If we can’t make it, someone will hold a sign._ Tim regarded being considerate as seriously as Anat did being hospitable. For Tim to send that message at very nearly the last minute indicated that he hadn’t had the time, the spoons or both to deal with it any sooner.

Effie really, really didn’t like the picture that these two messages painted. That Anat had bothered to leave that text at all meant that she expected Effie to hear about whatever the hell had happened from other sources. That Tim had his day off cancelled and moreover, could expect to be able to commandeer someone to pick Effie up from Reagan - that sounded more like _terrorist attack_ than _highway pileup._ And that wasn’t all. There was something else hidden in Tim’s message: _If we can’t make it. **We.**_ Anat was perfectly capable of meeting Effie at Reagan by herself, and while Tim was perfectly capable of objecting to that plan - he had his moments of unselfconscious sexism despite his best efforts - Anat wouldn’t let him get away with that, not if the only reason Tim didn’t want her wandering around DC by herself was that ridiculous masculine overprotectiveness. If Anat played along with this, then Tim had an actual _reason_ to keep Anat with him. That, together with Anat’s radio silence, read a very certain way.

This was supposed to be a vacation. Effie had been looking forward to it, too. _Kuss rabak ars, son of a thousand whores,_ she thought.

Getting a newspaper just became more urgent than getting breakfast.

 

* * *

 

_07:00_

 

“Agent DiNozzo,” Fornell said, quirking an eyebrow. “Didn’t expect to see _you_ here.”

“Didn’t really expect to be here,” Tony said. “You know what, on second thought - no, not really.”

They were standing side-by-side near the command station on the scene of the bombing. The scene was still lively, though not teeming with people as it had been the night before; the crime scene techs had gone on gathering evidence throughout the night, flooding the block with light. The FBI supplied most of the warm bodies, simply because they _had_ that many more warm bodies. Including NCIS on the case was more a courtesy than anything else except, perhaps, a pragmatic nod to Gibbs’ stubbornness. _And,_ Tony thought wryly, _a way to dump phone calls with pissed-off Israelis in Vance’s lap._ As much as the FBI treasured the knowledge Israel’s Security Establishment had to share, Tony doubted they liked the Israeli attitude any better than NCIS did.

As tempting as it was to leave the painstaking task of scene processing entirely to the FBI, NCIS couldn’t do that. Tony wasn’t interested in doing that, and he doubted anyone on his team was. That left the question of who would be the NCIS rep on the scene - and that wasn’t much of a question. McGee was a witness; Dorneget was a baby agent, who couldn’t be expected to hold his own just yet - and sending him would be an insult besides. Fornell deserved better than that. That left Gibbs or Tony himself, and Tony didn’t need to be told that this was his job. He’d supervised the NCIS portion of scene processing the day before. This was why he didn’t so much ask Gibbs for an assignment, as he texted his boss once he’d arrived on the scene. Gibbs would call him if he had a problem with that. which Tony doubted he would. On the other hand, Tony did understand Fornell’s comment. For Gibbs, letting Tony run the scene was an impressive display of relinquishing control.

Fornell grunted. “Well, about damn time he started trusting you, I say.”

“Hey, he trusts me; always has,” Tony said automatically, and then tried to not visibly wince. He wasn’t that man, anymore; wasn’t that boy; or he was trying very hard not to.

Fornell knew him too long, and has known Gibbs even longer. The look he gave Tony said that he wasn’t fooled in the least. All he said, though, was: “Then it’s about damn time he started acting like it, too.”

 

* * *

 

_07:20_

 

“Sorry I’m late, Boss,” Tim said as the two of them stepped out of the elevator. Anat let him do the talking; she was trying to drink her coffee and walk at the same time, and the level of coffee in the cup wasn’t yet low enough to make that safe. Tim had proper coffee and a proper pot at home but they simply didn’t have the time that morning. They’d had to stop somewhere that made espresso that didn’t double as battery acid on the way. It sufficed to say that Anat did not agree with US standards of “low acidity” in coffee. She was all out of decent instant coffee, too, and wouldn’t have any until Effie got there - which wasn’t for three hours more.

DiNozzo’s desk was visible first from the elevator, and it was empty. Ziva’s old desk had a nervous-looking agent a few years younger than Anat, who looked as if he neither slept at night nor knew how to carry that. His obvious anxiety made Anat feel weary. Rafah was a good desk with good people, but that just meant that Anat spent more of her time on the humane aspects of command than on the strictly professional. She could deal with playing analyst at what was supposed to be a vacation - it almost did feel like one, despite the circumstances - but she wasn’t particularly motivated to do Gibbs’ work for him again.

Speaking of, the man was at his desk, and barely glanced up at them from his monitor.

“You’re not late, McGee,” he said. “You’re not working the case.”

“I know, Boss.”

“He can’t, I can,” Anat said shortly.

Gibbs looked at her.

It wasn’t ideal. But if she was right then her knowledge was going to be required on this, and the sooner she became immersed in the details the better. She might even get lucky and catch the proof - no one else would even know to look for it, and she couldn’t say a word until it was proven.

This could make things iffy if the case would reach prosecution; she was aware of that. Gibbs had a history for being difficult to the point of senselessness, with a record of going to the extent risking damage to his cases if he thought he had a point to prove; Anat was well aware of that, too. She had been warned of it multiple times and explicitly so, in the course of the long chain of debriefs that Tim’s and her friendship required. She’d managed to work well with Gibbs a year and a half before, but she didn’t take that to mean that she wouldn’t need to fight for anything now.

She met Gibbs’ gaze evenly.

Eventually, he said: “All right. It’s all going through footage for now. You are _not_ conducting interviews.”

“Not what I’m for,” she replied. She didn’t know if he’d forgotten that she was an analyst, not an agent as he understood the word, or if that was a control schtick, but the answer was the same anyway.

“Boss?” McGee asked tentatively. He was looking at the pile of folders on his desk which, Anat surmised, had not been there the day before.

“Just because you’re not working _this_ case doesn’t mean other cases have ceased to exist, McGee.”

 

* * *

 

_08:00_

 

McGee glanced at the caller ID. It was an international number he didn’t recognize, which meant it was probably Effie’s travel rental. He picked up the call. “Hello?”

Indeed, it was Effie’s voice. “I’m at my gate, had breakfast and caught up on the news. Any idea what it’s going to look like when I touch down?”

“Other than vacation’s probably cancelled?” He glanced at the bulkhead blocking off view of Anat’s desk. “I don’t think I’m the person you should be asking.”

“Tim, I love my girlfriend, but she still hasn’t seen fit to contact me other than the single ‘I’m fine’ text after the two of you narrowly avoided discovering if Heaven has virgins.”

“I mean more along the lines of, I’m not allowed to work this case, and she somehow is.”

“Who’s that you’re talking to, McGee?” Gibbs asked without lifting his eyes off the footage.

“Hold on a second,” Tim told Effie, and then to Gibbs: “Effie. She’s at her gate at JFK, expected to land at Reagan in two hours. Think Anat and I will be able to go pick up her, boss?”

“I’m not the one you should be asking, McGee.”

Right. Because he was dealing with the non-urgent stuff, and Anat wasn’t officially-officialy on the case. Tim got up so he could glance over the bulkhead. “Anat?”

“Ma?” she asked in Hebrew. _What is it?_

“Do you want to go pick up Effie from the airport?”

“Is it time yet? It can’t be time yet.” She fired the words off quickly, without inflection, in the time it took her to pause the footage and locate the time. “It’s not time yet.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Tim told her, and then repositioned his cell phone and turned around back to his desk. “We should be able to make it.”

“Should is the name of a fish,” Effie said, simultaneously with Anat saying the same thing in Hebrew more loudly than was strictly necessary in Tim’s opinion.

“Fine. We’ll come pick you up barring unforeseen circumstances. And whatever you were intending to say next, please remember that you are in an American airport.”

“Who, me?”

“I know you, Effie. Your sense of humor would have you arrested by the TSA in twenty seconds flat.”

“I was thinking more like ten.”

Tim sighed. “Don’t get arrested, Effie.”

“Not planning on it. See you in a few.”

“See you,” Tim echoed, and hung up.

 

* * *

 

_09:45_

 

“God bless Central Air,” Tony announced as he stepped outside the elevator.

“You’re not gonna melt, DiNozzo,” Gibbs said in return.

Just because Tony knew that Gibbs thought he was helping didn’t mean his boss came across as any less belittling. After more than a decade of working with the man Tony knew better than to let it get to him. Well, mostly knew better than to let it get to him. It was still a work in progress. So long as Tony slapped a thick enough coat of humor on it, though, nobody was going to be any wiser. So Tony smiled widely as he stepped into the team’s aisle, and said: “No, but it was beginning to feel as if I’d never be dry again.” He looked around. “Timmy and Anat gone already?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh.” Tony would’ve expected Gibbs to not let Tim and Anat out of the office until Tony was back. Gibbs wasn’t the type to let anyone leave until their replacement had arrived. It almost looked as if Gibbs wanted them - likely wanted Anat - out before Tony got back. Clearly he was missing something here. “Any progress on IDing our mystery victim?”

“Doctor Mallard thinks he’ll be able to get DNA and at least one fingerprint,” Dorneget said. “That’s all we’ve got.”

 _And that’s going to be a while more,_ Tony filled in mentally. _And then we need to hope he’s on a database somewhere._ Which could happen if their vic was, say, a career criminal who’d made a mistake before. Otherwise, this was not so good. Tony held up the envelope he was holding and announced: “Anyway, I come bearing gifts. Got us another tape, this one from the 7-Eleven around the corner.” The 7-Eleven was their best bet. Traffic cameras just weren’t set up to capture pedestrians. Intel being what it was, it would be easier to identify a terrorist from his face than from his fingerprint.

Gibbs got up and went into the spare cubby. He emerged seconds later with a stack of papers. “Map pinned to the bulkhead,” he said, holding the papers out ot Tony.

Tony glanced at the papers as he took them. Each had a grainy photo up top, and a series of orderly but hand-written timestamps and abbreviations below. “Anat was going through the footage, I see.” The photos had to be people seen on the footage, with the dates and abbreviations corresponding to when and where they were seen. Tony _really_ didn’t get Anat’s preference for manual work. Gibbs’ excuse was being ancient, but Anat had no such excuse; she wasn’t even thirty yet. “What I wouldn’t give for McGeek and his map app right now.”

“You mean the GIS program?” Dorneget asked. “Agent McGee showed me how to use it.”

“Really?”

“Well, I can’t do half the things _he_ can do with it, but I think I know enough to do basic plotting.”

Tony glanced at Tim’s desk. The guy could be insufferable when someone touched his stuff, particularly his electronic stuff, particularly when it was Tony doing the touching. On the other hand, he had a soft spot for Dorneget which Tony didn’t entirely understand but was willing to exploit anyhow.

“And I have the software installed on my station,” Dorneget added.

That made things easier, if a lot less potentially amusing. Tony set the papers down on Dorneget’s desk with an audible slap. “Well then, probie. Let’s get cracking.”

 

* * *

 

_10:10_

 

Standing at the pick-up area of Reagan Airport, Anat was doing a fairly good impression of a sulking teenager. The floor was busy enough that she couldn’t see too far ahead. Tim was looking over the heads of the crowd, looking for Effie as well. He’d seen her enough times on video chat that he had a good chance of spotting her in a crowd: average height, size 8, looking more like a size 10 with the cut of jeans and T-shirts she tended to prefer, matte black hair that fell halfway down to her collar in a shaggy cut that no other woman Tim knew would get caught dead in.

Anat still spotted her first, twisting through the crowd to get to her girlfriend. Tim stayed put and waited on them. It also gave him a long enough time to decipher the sequence of zeroes and ones on Effie’s shirt.

“You’re lucky most people can’t sight-read binary to English,” he informed her once she and Anat were close enough.

“Planning isn’t luck,” she informed him as she reached up for a hug. “Hi, handsome. Finally we meet.”

“Please don’t say that near my colleagues,” he said. He obliged and hugged her back anyway; he wasn’t getting out of this one. “Tony will never shut up.”

“Motek, you’ve been talking about Tony how long?” Effie said. “I came prepared.”

“Effie,” Tim warned her as they broke apart. “You’re not going to do anything that’ll make me lose my security clearance, are you?”

“Mi, ani?” Effie asked. _Who, me?_

“Ken, at,” Tim replied in Hebrew - _Yes, you_ \- resigning himself to the inevitable pointless game, because both Anat and Effie found it amusing and he figured they could use that.

“Ma pit’om?” Effie countered. _No way._

“Ella mi?”

“Mispar shtayim,” Effie answered - _Number Two_ \- and pointed at Anat, completing the first verse. Thankfully, there was no Number Three for Anat to point to, and so the game stopped there.

“I’m not the one you need to worry about,” Effie continued.

“You say that, and yet I don’t believe you.”

She just gave him a look so blank it had to be deliberate.

“You’re going to give my boss a heart attack,” he sighed. “Or make him put a bullet in all of our heads, I’m not really sure.”

“Eh, he’s not half bad,” Anat said.

“He likes you,” Tim retorted. “Probably because you’re the only person other than him who won’t use a perfectly good computer when she has one.”

“I use computers. When they’re perfectly good.”

“She’s spoiled,” Effie told Tim, as if confiding.

“You’re not going to let me take that, are you?” he asked her.

“Nope,” Effie replied cheerfully, securing her hold on her trolley.

They started towards the elevators to the parking garage.

“How cancelled is vacation?” Effie asked.

“Halfway,” Anat replied shortly.

“So I’m allowed out but you’re back on the clock.”

 _Not officially,_ Tim almost said, but checked himself in time. He wasn’t blind and Anat was hiding something, but he also wasn’t stupid and poking Anat wasn’t going to achieve anything good. She’d made a meteoric rise after their little adventure with A-Tahaluf a year and a half before; she didn’t jump over two grades to make it to her current rank by being anything less than extremely good on the job, and - as much as Tim couldn’t make himself _see_ it - she had to be as ruthless as she was good in order to make up for the circumstances of her not re-upping with the military and for her years on the North Shomron desk.

If anybody would have to play bad cop with Anat - which Tim hoped they wouldn’t come to - then it certainly wasn’t going to be him.

“So what’s it going to be?” he asked Effie.

Effie’s default deadpan didn’t waver as she replied: “There’s no such thing as half-pregnant, and there’s no such thing as half on vacation.”

“So help us God,” Tim muttered.

 

* * *

 

_10:40_

 

 _This,_ Tony thought, _is going to be hilarious._ Well, it was going to be a disaster, but Tony was going to point and laugh. Besides, Timmy’d earned it. Tony would be the first to acknowledge that Abby could be a little _overbearing,_ but Tony figured she deserved a little sympathy: she was cooped up in that lab fourteen hours a day while the rest of them ran around the city, getting nearly blown up in their personal time.

Abby was pacing back and forth across the team’s aisle, openly agitated. Dorneget had tried engaging her in conversation once or twice before he wised up and realized that she didn’t want conversation, she needed to rant. Tony and Gibbs were long practiced in the art of weathering Abby’s temper.

Besides, McGee _totally_ earned it this time. And Tony was going to tell him that, if Tim turned to him for backup.

The elevator door opened, letting in McGee, Anat and another woman who had to be Effie Landsman. Tony got barely a split-second to consider her before Abby marched up to McGee, blocking Tony’s view of everything except the back of Abby’s black-and-white checkered outfit.

“McGee! Do you know what time it is?”

“Uh, a quarter to…”

“It’s almost _eighteen hours_ since you nearly got blown up! And in all that time, you called me how many times?”

“Uh…”

“Did you email? You didn’t even text! You were here for _two hours_ this morning, you were here last _night..._ ”

“Abby, I…”

“You know what, McGee? Forget it, I don’t want to hear it.”

“Oh, that’s rich. You’re the one who wasn’t so much as even _looking_ at me for the past _week,_ let alone talking to me!”

“And that means that I don’t care if you live or die how, exactly?”

McGee stared at her as if she’d grown a second head.

Effie stepped neatly around the quarreling duo, dragging her rolling luggage with her, and approached Tony’s desk from the side.

Effie was about average in height and size, and probably a little less heavy than she looked at first sight. She gave off a feeling of _butch_ that was probably the result of that haircut and that T-shirt - though on second thought, Tony was also going to add her gait to that list. Her hair was dark and her eyes brown, but her skin was quite pale for an Israeli. Something about her gave the feeling of a St. Bernard or perhaps a hush puppy dog - the sunken, heavy-lidded eyes, Tony thought, and that sense of patient, quiet sufferance.

Tony pushed his chair a little, making it easier to communicate over the bulkhead.

“Where can a woman get coffee around here?” she asked, pitching her voice quiet and low under the racket of Tim and Abby arguing only a few feet away.

“Break room’s over there,” Tony said, indicating in the appropriate direction. “But if you’re calling coffee machine coffee ‘coffee’, then you’re the first Israeli I know to do so.”

“Machine-coffee is vending machine coffee, and percolators are not coffee machines, espresso machines are,” she said, deadpan drawl still perfect. “Plus I came prepared.” She shifted her backpack.

 _Instant coffee,_ Tony mentally translated. Out loud, he said, “Well, we also have plain hot water. Also hi, I’m Tony.”

She reached over the bulkhead to shake his hand briefly. “Effie. Talk to you again after I make an offering to the gods. Good luck in the meantime.”

“Thanks,” Tony started saying, but Effie already got on the move, just as Abby turned towards him and she and Tim said, almost in perfect synch: “Tony!”

Tony sighed, and started his little lecture about the value of actually communicating with one another with: “Just so you know, you are both idiots.”

 

* * *

 

_13:30_

 

Vance waited until after lunch break and then, when Gibbs still didn’t come up to his office, went down to the MCRT floor. He’d expected that Gibbs would refuse to let any of his agents leave to fetch food for the rest, but surprisingly, the aisle really did smell like food. Of course, Vance realized: McGee was off the case and there was the matter of Mejaled’s girlfriend.

Mejaled’s girlfriend, who was nowhere to be seen. But one matter at a time.

“Tell me something new,” Vance said as he strode into the aisle.

“Well, there’s not much to tell, Leon.”

“That’s what I assumed when you didn’t come upstairs, but I decided I want an update anyway.”

Gibbs and McGee both looked in the direction of Dorneget’s desk, where both Dorneget and Mejaled were seated. Vance turned towards them.

After a second, Dorneget said: “We have tentative ID on two of the victims. DNA will take a few days, but - they appear to be unrelated. To this. I mean…”

DiNozzo cut him off. “The Director knows what you mean, Dorneget. Or at least I hope so.”

“Anything to add, Agent DiNozzo?” Vance asked.

“Yes,” DiNozzo said promptly. “FBI called minutes ago. They IDed the car. And, surprise surprise, it was stolen. Two weeks ago.”

“Our bombers like to take their time,” Vance noted.

“Our bombers know what they’re doing,” DiNozzo agreed. “And have probably done it before, too. FBI got the remains of the bomb, and they’re adding everything they’ve got to the database search. Those guys ever set off a bomb anywhere any US federal agency keeps track of, we’re going to know who they are. Or at least where they’ve been,” he added, grimacing.

Dealing with experienced bombers was a two-edged sword. Inexperienced bombers were more likely to make mistakes; on the other hand, experienced bombers would have left more of a trail behind them, overall.

“Understood,” Vance acknowledged.

“Witness reports are mostly useless, so far,” DiNozzo continued, “but that’s going to take time to get through.”

“Speaking of things that take time to go through,” Vance said.

“Something’s going to come out of the footage,” Mejaled said. “No fourth body means trigger-person. We’re mapping everyone’s movements, got a few potentials. If we’re lucky the trigger-person didn’t evacuate with the witnesses.”

“And if they did, background check will catch them,” DiNozzo countered across the aisle.

“If the bombers were that smart, they were smart enough to use a clean person to trigger the bomb.”

Gibbs spoke up, cutting into what seemed to be an argument Mejaled and DiNozzo had had a few times already. “Like I said, Leon. Nothing much. When we actually got something, I’ll let you know.”

 

* * *

 

_15:30_

 

The phone on Gibbs’ desk rang. He picked it up. “Yeah.”

“It’s Brandt from Security. There is a lawyer Anna Herman headed your way.  Something about locating her client.”

“Thanks,” Gibbs said, and hung up. The name Anna Herman didn’t ring any bells. He also didn’t have anyone in custody who was waiting on their lawyer. Which meant - “McGee!”

“Yes, boss?”

“Anna Herman, lawyer.” He didn’t bother saying _And make it fast._ The tone of his voice carried the urgency, without wasting time on words.

Mejaled glanced at Gibbs, and then picked herself and her coffee up and moved out from behind Dorneget’s desk, pushing her chair before her. DiNozzo gave her a sharp look and then pushed around the neat stacks on his own desk, settling into his camouflage of carelessness. Dorneget mostly looked confused, but settled back into typing in _something_ before McGee started rattling information, sparing Gibbs from having to snap at him.

“Anna Christine Herman, graduated from Georgetown University, been practicing for eight years, 35 years old. Specializes in immigration, and particularly issues of human rights, such as requests for asy -”

The elevator dinged. A sharp look shut McGee up. Dorneget had pushed Mejaled’s maps under other papers - at DiNozzo’s prompting, judging by the latter’s look. Mejaled herself was hidden in the spare cubicle.

The woman that the security guard escorted to Gibbs’ desk wore the standard dark suit uniform of a lawyer, her hair pinned back into a tight bun. She had a pinched look to her, genuinely worried, touched with tiredness. On instinct, Gibbs stood up. He nodded at the security guard, who nodded back and turned around, heading back to his post.

“Agent Gibbs?” the woman asked.

“That’s me,” he acknowledged.

She held out her hand. “My name is Anna Herman. I think you’re holding the body of my client.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- "HaKol Beseder": "Everything's fine".  
> \- "Kuss emmek": Arabic. "[your] mother's pussy"  
> \- "Kuss rabak ars": Arabic. "[your] pimp daddy's pussy"  
> \- "Ma?": "What?" Used for _everything._
> 
> \- Should/supposed is the name of a fish: The Hebrew word for "Should" or "supposed" is "amur". There is a river in Siberia called Amur, and there is a species of carp named for it. There are two kinds of Israelis: the ones who say "It should be fine, trust me" and the ones who cut them off with "Should is the name of a fish!"
> 
> \- The play song: this is a child play song. Each child is assigned a number. The chorus of all kids goes: "Who stole the cookies from the jar? Was it you, number one?" The following dialogue ensues:  
> "Mi, ani?" ("Who, me?")  
> "Ken, ata." ("Yes, you.")  
> "Ma pit'om?" ("Why ever?")  
> "Ella mi?" ("Then who?")  
> At which point #1 passes the game on to another number, and the song begins from "Who stole the cookies from the jar?" The dialogue part of the play-song is a cultural meme, and the way Effie and Anat invoke it at any excuse is entirely typical. [Here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-fVfPAl-ig), have a family playing with it, and good luck getting it out of your head.


	3. Other Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last week I was an idiot and (a) uploaded the chapter a day late, (b) forgot the notes. The previous two chapters now have their notes in.

_“This is my road_   
_To the other dreams”_  
\- [Other Dreams](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3Cpi5OwYqY), Meir Banai

 

* * *

 

_Friday, August 16, 2013_

 

_15:30_

 

“Agent Gibbs?” the woman asked.

“That’s me,” he acknowledged.

She held out her hand. “My name is Anna Herman. I think you’re holding the body of my client.”

He shoot her hand. “Yeah?”

“Yes,” she confirmed. “His name is Rahim Said. Yesterday we had a hearing at the Asylum Office in Arlington. I tried to get a hold of him today, and…” She spread her arms to the sides. “The Arlington Office is a mile, maybe two miles from that restaurant. We were out of that hearing by half past five.”

The average urban walking speed was about 2.5 miles per hour. Gibbs knew where that office was. The timeline seemed to fit. They needed to know more about Said. “Let’s take this somewhere more private,” he suggested to the lawyer.

“Of course.” She let him direct her out of the aisle easily.

Gibbs let his gaze meet DiNozzo’s for a fraction of a second as they left in the direction of the conference room. DiNozzo inclined his chin in a miniature nod.

The cameras would be on.

Good.

 

* * *

 

Usually they would stream the conference room video to McGee’s computer, but all their computers were set up for it. Tony opened the feed on his own computer and instructed Dorneget to do the same. McGee didn’t open the feed on his computer, which surprised Tony: while it was better to not have McGee do any work on the case which may later need to appear in Court, there was no reason for him to not watch.

Except, Tony thought, that it forced Anat to sit with someone who was not Tim. Tony didn’t miss how she’d put herself out of sight as soon as the lawyer arrived, or how she waited until she and Gibbs were firmly out of earshot before she emerged. That and McGee’s wariness gelled with Tony’s earlier impression that Gibbs was wary of Anat as well. Tony didn’t know Anat well enough to tell if her intensity over the past day was normal or a red flag of some sort, but Tim did. And evidently, he thought it a red flag. Gibbs was probably just naturally suspicious, and he could have picked on Tim’s wariness besides.

If Anat was aware that they were dancing around her, she didn’t show it at all as she pushed her chair behind his desk.

 _It might be easier if you sat in my lap,_ he almost said, but didn’t. He was pretty sure that Anat _would,_ and he didn’t need McGee’s scandalized commentary right when Gibbs and Herman entered the conference room.

“Something’s weird,” Dorneget said.

“What is it, Dorni?”

“I can’t access Said’s immigration file. Any of it. I can’t even get confirmation that it exists.”

“Huh. That is weird.” Was it his imagination, or did Anat tense? “You probably just typed it wrong, or something. Oh, there they are. Now sh!”

On screen, Gibbs and the lawyer entered the conference room. The first thing Gibbs did was offer her coffee, which gave Tony enough time to fiddle with the volume controls. She accepted the offer, and Gibbs poured coffee for them both.

“Your client is Rahim Said?” Gibbs asked.

“Yes.”

“And he’s in the process of seeking asylum here.”

“Yes.”

There was something in the way she said it, though.

Gibbs must have spotted it too, because his tone shifted - very subtly, unless you knew him or was just that good - as he asked her: “Why did he need asylum?”

She rubbed her forehead. “Rahim’s case is my most complicated to date. Yesterday’s hearing was an appeal - they were going to send him back. He’s got nowhere to return to and they know it, but I don’t think they care.”

“Where’s he from?” Gibbs asked, instead of repeating his previous question.

“Palestine. Gaza, specifically.”

Tony glanced at Anat. Her face was blank but tense, lips pressed together. Her body was full of tension, too.

 _Gaza._ Rafah was at the southern end of the Strip, at the border with Egypt. What did Anat know? How could she have possibly known at the scene? What kind of a game were the Israelis playing _now_?

“Was he running from Hamas?” Gibbs asked.

“From Hamas,” Herman agreed. “From his family in particular and from Hamas in general. He was afraid they’d get him even here - that’s why he changed his name.”

“Oh, now you tell us?” Tony asked rhetorically.

Herman continued. “His original name was Ziyad Hussain.”

Anat definitely responded to that name. It was almost - Tony thought as he watched her out of the corner of his eye - as if she was surprised, just a little, as if she hadn’t been sure.

Gibbs continued questioning Herman, though he softened his tone just a little in the face of Herman’s obvious anguish. There was no need to antagonize the mostly-cooperative subject. “Had he been involved with Hamas? Is that why his petition was about to be rejected?”

“He had no choice about being involved with Hamas. His father is Sheikh Tawfeek Hussain, leader of their religious council. But he didn’t want to be part of that, he hated everything Hamas stood for. And we could prove it, but none of _them_ would speak for him.”

“None of whom?” Gibbs asked.

He probably already knew, just like Tony did. Anat’s face was still blank, her lips still a thin white line.

“The Shin-Beit,” Herman said with open exasperation. “He turned on his family and worked for the Shin-Beit. That’s why he had to flee. They wouldn’t own up to their own actions. And now he’s dead.”

Tony had heard enough. “Keep listening,” he ordered Dorneget,. “Put your earphones on, keep listening, run _everything_ she says. And you and I,” he continued, turning to Anat, who had the gall to meet his eyes calmly, “you and I need to talk. But first things first. We need that file.” Hussain Jr.’s file would have his fingerprints, all Asylum files did. Ducky said he could get at least one good print off the body. They had to confirm that they body they had was, actually, Hussain’s.

“I’ll -” McGee began and, at Tony’s look, amended to: “Call Agent Fornell.”

“There’s a good McGee.” McGee could obtain that file - McGee could probably even _legally_ obtain that file - but it would be easier and better for everyone’s peace of mind if the FBI dealt with that. Plus, they were doing most of the work on this case and Fornell would appreciate being informed ASAP, even if it was just a suspicion at this point.

That taken care of, Tony turned his attention back to Anat.

“I thought I recognized him, just before the bomb went off,” she said, not waiting for him to ask. “Right by that car, right before it went off.”

“Did you recognize him because he’s the son of Hamas’s religious leader or because he was your asset?”

“I thought I recognized him by that car right before it went off and that’s all I can say before I phone home. So let’s find me an appropriate phone line, and then we can have this conversation.”

 

* * *

 

_17:00_

 

Mejaled was nowhere to be seen when Gibbs walked Herman to the elevator, but she was out in the open and standing with him team when he strode into the aisle.

“Was he your asset?” he demanded.

“Yes.”

He glanced at DiNozzo. “Do we know that it was actually him?”

“We should have fingerprint ID within an hour, but…” He glanced at Mejaled.

“I recognized him by that car right before the bomb went off,” she said, and Gibbs could just tell that she’d repeated that many times that afternoon.

“And you didn’t say anything, because?”

“Because I wasn’t sure.”

“Did your people have him killed?” he demanded.

Her nostrils flared. “We didn’t.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because of how it was done.”

“Because you people will never make it look like someone else?”

“Because we wouldn’t approve an operational plan damn near guaranteed to result in collateral, let alone on friendly turf.” Her eyes went hard. Like the day before at the scene of the bombing, it seemed to not matter to her that she was less than five feet and maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet.

“You’re going to cooperate now?” he asked.

“I’m cooperating; you’re checking who has a bigger dick. Or are you done getting in the way of hunting down the local branch of Hamas?”

He wasn’t going to hit a woman, let alone one who was barely big enough to be a high school student. Ordering her out of the bullpen would also be monumentally stupid - if he kicked her out now she wouldn’t head to the FBI but rather straight to the Israeli embassy, and that would be the last they would see of Israeli cooperation on this case. Ordering her into an interrogation room would be just as stupid. The fallout from their having risen to Orly Elbaz’s bait that way back in April had been bad, bad enough that Gibbs wasn’t going to replay that move, let alone with a woman the FBI considered to be their official guest. He wasn’t going to put Tobias through this particular wringer.

He forced himself to close his mouth, step back and head upstairs to update Vance, but it came at a considerable effort.

 

* * *

 

_17:45_

 

The answer was no, Gibbs was not done overcompensating for what had to be a very small dick. The division of labor he’d enforced once he was back from his boss’s office was useless for any purpose other than preserving his sense of control. He’d sent Tim to sit with the FBI techs, supposedly because Gibbs didn’t trust them and more likely because he could get away with it and it put Tim away from Anat. And because that didn’t send a clear enough message, he’d insisted on Tony doing the database work and on Dorneget alone doing the video analysis. It was a waste of an experienced person and worse, it left the most crucial task to an unqualified one.

Gibbs was waving his dick around and spoiling for a fight, Anat was not about to lower herself to his level and give it to him. She wasn’t going to put up with it, either. She didn’t get a desk of analysts older and more experienced than her to bring her the problems they needed solved by handling conflicts like a high-schooler. Instead, she went up the stairs, silenced the secretary with a look and strode straight into Vance’s office.

Vance didn’t even startle at her entrance. He said to whoever he was on the phone with “I’ll get back to you,” hung up, and told her: “I don’t really need to ask what this is about, do I.”

“You can make him cooperate or I can call my liaison at the embassy for a ride and tell him that you don’t want our cooperation after all,” she said flatly.

“That bad.”

She didn’t dignify that with a response.

“That bad,” he repeated, but this time it sounded like a confirmation, not like a question.

“He gave the job that needs experience to Dorneget, the rote job to DiNozzo, and sent McGee out to look over the shoulder of a job he’s not allowed to touch.”

Vance’s eyebrows shot up. “And cut you out, I presume.”

“If I could be doing my job I wouldn’t be considering going to the embassy.” She really didn’t want to do that, which Vance probably figured; but he also knew that she could shut the tap, and exactly how crippled NCIS and the FBI would become in this investigation as a result - and that the FBI would take it out on NCIS, and who at NCIS would have to answer for that.

Vance pushed himself up. “All right.”

As soon as they stepped out to the mezzanine it became obvious that things had gone even more wrong in the one minute it’d taken Anat to fetch Vance.

“-hearing me, Gibbs?” demanded Abby’s voice.

“I’m hearing you, Abbs.”

“Then answer me! Do you not trust me?”

“Of course I trust you.”

Abby’s voice turned petulant, but no less high-pitched for it. “Then why did you send McGee all the way to the FBI to do _my_ job?”

Anat had left Vance at the top of the platform and started down the stairs. She’d already reached the MCRT level when his voice rang out, cutting the argument below: “Gibbs.”

Anat had a fairly good idea where this was going, and she turned left to the break room instead of right to the bullpen. She was proven right when Vance continued: “If you could come up here, please.”

Gibbs was going to hate her for this. Given his display of gross lack of professionalism, Anat didn’t really care.

 

* * *

 

_18:45_

 

The first time Ned Dorneget worked with Team Gibbs, Agent DiNozzo’s father was a murder suspect. The second time, a supermodel turned out to be a Russian weapons trafficker. So despite having only been _on_ Team Gibbs for about a month, Ned figured that Team Gibbs’ knack for attracting the crazy was one aspect he was prepared for.

As it turned out, he forgot to account for the kind of crazy that ensues when Israelis were involved. This was particularly frustrating because Anat was supposed to be the nice one. Team Gibbs had a track record with Israelis; it was hard to work for NCIS out of the Navy Yard and not know that. But everyone had been talking about Anat for weeks and from everything Ned had heard, she was okay. Even Gibbs himself seemed to like her: DiNozzo joked about that incessantly and Gibbs made no attempt to deny it. At first Ned put the tension up to the bombing, but then the truth about their victim came out. Gibbs and Mejaled snarling at each other was… disheartening.

And then it got worse. And in the aftermath of it Getting Worse, Ned was reassigned to what felt a little like picking up after everyone else - database searches and double- and triple-checking information - but could potentially give Ned the best view of the case, if he could avoid drowning in the details. Which he was miserably failing at. First chance he had to flee to the break room and maybe _breathe_ for a few moments, he took it.

He’d totally forgotten that Mejaled’s girlfriend was sitting in the break room. She’d only come out to the bullpen once or twice in all the hours she’d been there. He froze for a moment, but as she seemed to totally ignore him, he made a beeline for the coffee. He was so tired, and the coffee was so tempting. But Ned knew that if he’d have normal coffee in his current state he’d get agitated and nervous, and would have trouble winding down once he did get home. So instead, he poured himself a cup of decaf.

It was only after he’d drained a good third of the cup in one long gulp that he realized something was off.

“This coffee tastes really weird,” he remarked.

Mejaled’s girlfriend didn’t raise her eyes from her book. “Mm-mm.”

“No, really, I think there’s something wrong with it.”

“There isn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I made it.”

Ned wondered if this counted as experience in interrogating a hostile witness. It certainly looked like what he’d seen through the glass. “Is it our usual coffee?”

“Did you use the decaf pot?”

“Yes.”

“Then I cannot answer your question.”

“Why? You said you made this coffee.”

“I did,” she agreed. Finally, she looked up. “But decaf is not coffee, which makes your question impossible to answer.”

She was being cryptic and he was tired, but he got the gist of it. “So this is not decaf, is that what you’re saying?”

“It is very definitely not decaf. Did you take that black?”

“Yes.”

“Come over here.”

He hesitated for a moment, but then he did. She grabbed his wrist and pulled it down so she could peer into his cup. “Was that full?”

“Yeah.”

She let go of his hand. “Hm.”

“Hm, what?” He asked. She was making him nervous, but the demonstrative way she’d gotten back to her book after making that noncommittal sound was not unlike the way DiNozzo behaved when he was pulling one over someone; that, at least, gave Ned some hope.

“Nothing. Just hoping you won’t end up in the hospital with internal bleeding. That stuff’s strong, and if you’re used to drinking neutered coffee…”

“You’re pulling my leg.”

She glanced back up. “Good on you for finally figuring it out.”

“I didn’t believe you for a second,” he protested.

She pointed at his cup. “What kind of coffee is that, again?”

He stared at her. “I’m getting out of here and I am never believing a word you say.”

She waited until he’d turned his back before she called out: “Today is Friday!”

Ned was beginning to understand why Gibbs hated Israelis and why for all his grumbling, DiNozzo actually really liked them.

 

* * *

 

_20:00_

 

The contents of his fridge were not any better than they’d been the day before. Worse, really, because he was now out of pasta. Tony stood in the middle of his kitchen and considered the situation for a few moments, and then strode to the phone and ordered Thai. He earned it. His day had _sucked_ andhis weekend was going to suck even worse.

He already had the tequila bottle in hand when he remembered that even though his dinner was secured it was going to take long enough to arrive that he was not allowed to drink, yet. He put the bottle down and forced his hand to unclench from around it, then poured himself a glass of water. He didn’t want water, but he didn’t want orange juice even more.

There were no new messages from Ziva. That hit him a little harder than he expected, which he put up to how much today had sucked, and in which ways. Anat’s storming up to Vance’s office had Tony thinking of Jenny Shepard the entire drive home. Ziva used to go to Shepard this way, and for the same reasons. The memories unsettled Tony; they felt almost like they belonged to another person.

He shook himself, logged out, logged into the Samuel Jones account - and then blinked in surprise. He had a new email from Yael. The only time Yael had emailed him two days in a row before was when his apartment had been shot out. Which had been really endearing and somewhat disturbing if he let himself think about it too much, but the thing was, he hadn’t just been shot at and he really hoped that this didn’t mean he was about to be.

As it turned out, though, all the email held was the most lopsided hug emoticon he had ever seen and another youtube link. Which, in turn, turned out to be the Backstreet Boys’ _Everybody._ Tony stared at it for a few minutes in fascinated horror - if the thing had been released today, it would’ve been a Gangnam Style-style viral hit - and then had to pause it and get up, because his food had arrived.

A few spring rolls, a chicken sate and half a mojito later, something started to really bug Tony. He took his mojito and went back to the computer.

That emoticon was really lopsided. Really, really lopsided. And Yael wouldn’t have emailed him two days in a row without a reason, she just wouldn’t. He copied the emoticon down on a piece of paper but, on a second thought, didn’t drop the virtual masks. A quick Wikipedia search confirmed that Yael was the right age to have been into the Backstreet Boys when she was a wee early teen; Ziva had claimed to not know who they were, but Ziva was full of shit sometimes.

Tony chewed his lip. The Backstreet Boys vid was obvious a reply to his comment about her musical taste, but theoretically it could be something more. Unless the warped emoticon was. And he still hadn’t figured out what Yael had meant with the Katy Perry vid. Well, it had a jungle, but he knew Ziva was in Africa, and half of Africa was a jungle.

 _Half of Africa was a jungle._ Tony sat up straight and pulled up a map. Yael had put a dot in the middle of the parentheses - or sort of in the middle, because there was an unequal number on each side. Suppose the dot was where Ziva was. Suppose the parentheses were, say, borders - he’d be screwed if they were rivers - of ir there was more than one match -

 _There._ There wasn’t more than one match. There was only one match, and according to the crappy free internet satellite image it was mostly jungle.

He knew where Ziva was.

Now the only question was, what was Ziva doing at a place as un-tourist-y as the Central African Republic?

 

* * *

 

_21:00_

 

Gibbs was in the kitchen when he heard the front door open and shut again. He didn’t bother turning around; he knew this particular set of steps.

A moment later, the steps came into the kitchen. “You’d better have another one of th…” said Tobias Fornell’s voice. Then he came around and saw the broiler pan with the two steaks in it. “Expecting company, Jethro?”

“You, Tobias.” Gibbs glanced at him. Predictably, Tobias was holding a bottle of bourbon - and less predictably,  a tupperware box. “What are those?”

“Cupcakes”, Tobias said with a straight face. “Emily made them.”

“I see,” Gibbs said.  Tobias’ daughter definitely needed more baking experience. He gestured towards the bourbon. “You going to crack that open?”

Tobias snorted, but reached for the overhead cabinet. A moment later, both of them with a glass in hand, he spoke again. “So what’s going on, Gibbs? I was ready to swear that this is the nicest you had ever played with Israelis, and then I got a phone call saying that Mejaled opted out of NCIS escort for the night.”

If Fornell wanted to ask a question, he could ask a damn question. Gibbs drank his bourbon and kept his eyes on the steaks.

“What did you do to chase her to a hotel, Jethro?”

“Maybe she just wanted some privacy with her girlfriend, Tobias.”

“If that was true you wouldn’t be avoiding the damn question.” Pause. “And you definitely wouldn’t be expecting me for dinner.”

“We had a disagreement. Purely professional.”

“Would this ‘purely professional’ disagreement happen to be about whether or not her organization killed their runaway asset?” Fornall asked bluntly.

Gibbs looked at him.

“It’s a fair question to ask,” Fornell pointed out.

Gibbs snorted, remembering the vehemence of Mejaled’s response. “She says they didn’t.”

“And you don’t believe her.”

“Well, no, Tobias, I don’t.” He flipped the steaks over. “And she disagreed with how I assigned _my_ people based on that.”

“And yet none of your boys showed up hovering over my boys’ shoulders.”

Gibbs took another swallow from the bourbon.

“Really? She beat you on your own turf? How did she manage that?”

He kept his eyes on the steaks.

“I thought you and your Director finally had an understanding.”

“Yeah,” Gibbs bit out. “He was right there when I put Director Elbaz in an interrogation room four months ago.”

“You…” Gibbs turned his head at the sound of Fornell gulping down his bourbon before slamming the glass down on the counter. A second later, Fornell reached for the bottle and uncorked it.

Gibbs put his own glass on the counter, next to Tobias’s, who poured them both a generous serving. “I take it that didn’t go well,” he said.

Gibbs shook his head. “Not really.” Tom Morrow had apparently been telling Vance for months before that the Israelis weren’t dicking around on the matter of Eli David’s death. Vance hadn’t listened. Frankly, Gibbs wouldn’t have either.

“So when Mejaled went over your head, Vance didn’t really have a choice,” Fornell said. When Gibbs said nothing, he continued: “How big a stick are they holding over your head?”

Gibbs shook his head.

“And Eli David was killed on our turf,” Fornell muttered. “That girl gets so much as a scratch on her, I’ll be getting fed to the Shin-Beit’s dogs.”

“Pass me some plates.”

Tobias did.

“Ever heard of the DSDE?” He asked as he slid the steaks onto the plates. He kept his voice neutral.

Fornell froze. “ _That’s_ who you picked a fight with?” he demanded. He shook his head. “I’d rather be fed to feral dogs. _Alive_.”

Gibbs shook his head again as they made their way to the kitchen table. “He still didn’t make himself known.”

“I hear it’s a ‘she’ nowadays,” Tobias said. He pulled himself a chair. “Which is not to say that she isn’t not the scariest person in Israel. I’m pretty sure she is, as that is essentially part of the job requirements.”

“The Director of Security in the Defense Establishment.” Gibbs pulled himself a chair as well.

“You’d better believe it,” Fornell cautioned. “The DSDE’s job is to keep the Israeli Defense Establishment in line, and they’re all deathly terrified of him. Her.”

“Eat your steak, Tobias. It’s getting cold.”

“I’m just saying, Jethro.” But he cut into his steak. “If the DSDE decided you’re interesting, you’d better make yourself boring, fast.”

 

* * *

 

_Saturday, August 17, 2003_

 

_05:30_

 

Tim was woken from sleep at oh-dark-thirty by loud, police-style knocking on his door. His first thought was that Parsons had done a face-heel-turn; Tim has definitely been having nightmares about that possibility. His second thought was that he’d slept in catastrophically - but no, it was still dark and also, Tim was pretty sure it was Saturday. It was the weekend, Tim was not officially on the case, and he fully intended to use that to avoid the office drama. And also keep Effie busy with tourist stuff, because as much as he liked Effie, he really didn’t like the idea of an Israeli cyber-warfare professional in the same building as classified computer systems. Effie would not deliberately harm his country’s security, but Tim wouldn’t bet anything important on her failing to classify burying a Trojan in the NCIS servers as a hostile act.

Whoever it was at his door was still knocking.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Tim called out, despite that he was pretty sure it won’t carry. He pushed himself out of bed, reaching for his cell phone as he did so. He had no missed calls, no text messages, and the hour was what Anat would call _fuck o’clock._ Tim was sorely tempted to borrow the expression.

Particularly when it turned out that the person banging his door down was Tony in a grey suit - in a grey suit on a _Saturday_ \- and with a disturbing manic gleam in his eyes.

Since Tony was not going to go away, Tim opened the door. “Tony, do you know how early it is?”

Tony shouldered him aside and let himself in. “Yes, that’s why I brought you coffee.”

Tim accepted the paper cup automatically first and looked at it second -  or rather third, since he closed the door second. “This is bad, isn’t it.”

“Now why would you say that?”

“Because you’re all but kicking my door down before sunrise on a weekend, Tony. And because you brought me the good coffee.” He drank the coffee anyway. It really was the good coffee, and he was going to need it - since whatever this was about, Tony wanted it badly.

Tony dropped the cheer. “I know where Ziva is.”

Tim maneuvered them to the living room and dropped down on one of the couches. “She finally slipped up?”

“Yeah.” Tony hovered anxiously at the edge of the overstuffed chair. “She’s in the Central African Republic.”

That took a second to parse. “She’s _where?_ Didn’t they just have a regime change?”

“That’s one way to put it, yeah.”

“The Central African Republic is the next Rwanda in the making. It’s about as far from a tourist destination as it gets. What is she even doing there?”

Tony finally slid the rest of the way into the chair. “And that’s what I need you to find out.”

“Oh, great.” Tim rubbed a hand over his face. The Central African Republic wasn’t a diamond export center, but it was a little difficult to ignore that the last loose end they had on Eli David’s death and Bodnar’s little conspiracy had led to Africa. Ziva had a record for vendettas, and Bodnar’s death had been snatched out of her hands. “I am going to need more coffee for this.”

“I got you started,” Tony pointed out.

“A _lot_ more coffee.” It just had to be Africa. Of course it had. This was going to be hell. Unless… “I may need to bring Effie in on this.”

“Effie?”

“She’s a better hacker than I am, Tony.”

“So that’s why you didn’t want her within five feet of any wifi-capable device yesterday.” Tony paused. “Where does she work, again?”

“She’s a civilian, a proper civilian.” Developing dual-use Big Data analysis suites, but Tim only had supposition regarding which side of the dual-use Effie fell on.

“So she’s not going to turn around and report this to anyone. Except she might tell Anat.”

“Well. This isn’t officially an NCIS case, is it?”

“Not really, no.”

“Then I don’t think Anat is under obligation to pass it on.”

“Yeah, because Mossad isn’t doing the same math we are, Tony. They were one step ahead of us about Bodnar, when we thought they were three steps behind.”

Tony scowled.

Tim softened his voice. “Effie’s a civilian, Tony. That plus plausible deniability? Also I could _really_ use the help.”

“Why not ask your girlfriend?”

“Because Delilah will want the details, and she’ll know what it means if I can’t give them to her.” Delilah had a higher security clearance than he did, and a Collections professional’s respect for information security. She’d turn a blind eye and a closed mouth, respecting that Team Gibbs did things differently, but she couldn’t be brought on board. “ You want a fast answer, Effie is our best bet.”

That did the trick. “How fast?” Tony asked, a little suspiciously.

“Possibly by the end of the weekend. I can’t promise that,” he added hastily as Tony lit up, “but without Effie’s help - well, you remember how long it took us last time.” Tim tried to not flinch visibly; that statement took the cheer right out of Tony and replaced it with a hollow look.

“All right, you do that. I’ll tell you what, today’s coffee bill on me, all right?” Tony pushed himself up. “I’m probably going to regret that, aren’t I.”

“Possibly,” Tim agreed. He pushed himself up as well. “Probably.”

“I who am about to die salute you, oh Elf Lord, and buy you coffee as tribute.”

Tim snorted, despite of himself. “Try to look pathetic; Anat won’t kick a puppy. And tell Gibbs I’m keeping Effie out of his hair for the weekend. That should make him less homicidal.”

“I hope.” Tony passed a hand through his hair. “Good luck.”

“You too.”

 

* * *

 

_06:15_

 

The ground floor of the NCIS building was predictably empty. It made the person sitting off to the side behind the security line stand out all the much more.

“I totally forgot at what insane hours you people arrive at the office in the morning.”

“You’re here same as I am,” Anat shot back.

“Later than you are.”

“By ten minutes. And you probably had to get up earlier than I did.”

“Did you have to set an alarm clock? Because I did.” The look Anat gave him wasn’t quite a glare, but it wasn’t a non-glare, either. Apparently he hit a spot. “And don’t even try blaming the jet lag.”

“Shut up and let’s go hunting.” Anat pushed herself up. He was never going to get used to how tiny she was. Even though…

He squinted at her T-shirt as they got into the elevator. The shirt had sleeves and was at least a size too big for her. “That is not your shirt.”

“Do you want brownie points, Detective?”

“No, you’re wearing your girlfriend’s shirt, that’s cute.”

“She woke up just long enough to insist I wear it.”

“I did wonder how she’s dealing with your idea of a vacation wake-up. What’s so important about this shirt?”

“She says it’s safer.”

Arranged around a drawing of the Hulk’s face, Anat’s green shirt declared: _Keep calm and don’t make me angry._

The elevator dinged open at the MCRT floor.

“Your girlfriend is a smart woman.”

“Duh. She’s dating me.”

“I’m going to tell her you said that.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Since it’s a publicised and well-known story, I’ll note that Ziyad Hussain is based off [Mosab Hassan Yousef](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosab_Hassan_Yousef)’s story (see: _Son of Hamas_ ). I’ll let you play “Spot the expy” on the rest.
> 
> \- [Anat’s shirt](http://www.imadehome.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/agung-26-04-2013-hulk-calm-women.jpg) (Technically Effie’s shirt that Anat was wearing, but.)


	4. Victories

_“I’ve no strength left for wars_   
_These wars have slaughtered me_   
_These years of victories_   
_Are now the doom of me.”_   
-[Victories](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOfc5EOe9Lg), Alma Zohar 

 

* * *

 

_Saturday, August 17, 2013_

 

_07:00_

 

Effie opened the hotel room door and squinted at him. “Were you betting on the jet leg waking me up early or the iced café saving your life?”

“Both,” Tim answered honestly.

She stepped aside. “Speak, Friend, and enter.”

Tim handed her the coffee slush and stepped into the room.

“So what’s the plan for today?”

“That’s something we probably need to talk about,” he admitted.

Her eyebrows shot up. She put the coffee slush down on the coffee table and started digging around in her backpack. “Yeah, yesterday put a twist on things.”

“Something like that. Listen, Effie…”

She turned around to face him. She was holding two bags made of silvery tarp, one of which she dropped her cell phone into and scotch-taped shut. The other bag she held to him. Tim obediently fished out his own phone and sealed it away.

Effie checked the other device she was holding - which looked like an old mp3 player if you didn’t look too closely - and then nodded, put it down and picked her coffee back up, dropping down to sit on the bed. “Now. What’s the real reason you’re here before breakfast?”

Tim sat down on the chair that didn’t have her backpack on it. “Do you usually pack a spy kit when you go on vacation?” He didn’t ask where she even got an anti-COMINT kit from; she worked at the kind of company that would hand it out for business trips.

“I was calling myself paranoid for packing it,” she said, shrugging off her own honesty.

He’d thought about how to present it to Effie. He’d told Tony it would be fine, and he believed it would be, but that didn’t mean that it would be easy to present it in a safe way to all involved. “I could use your help on something. Something off the books.”

“Just how ‘off the books’ is it? Is NCIS or any branch of your government going to use it in any way?”

“If it would be used, it would be on a personal basis,” he answered. Then he reconsidered. Vance had let them go after Ziva before - and he hadn’t even like her that much, then. The past year had made friends of Ziva and the Director, bringing them together in grief and a shared desire for retribution. “Well - there’s an off chance it might be deniable, rather than personal. It’s not in itself illegal in any way, just...”

Effie’s expression didn’t flicker. “I’m not yet saying yes. But if I would, and if you would need to show this to anyone, you’re going to find alternate explanations for any part of this that I put together. You’re taking all the credit, to anyone. And anything I might do, I’m not showing you how I did it.”

In other words, he would need to launder anything he got from her, and she would share results and not methods. That was part for the course for intel sharing that fell short of a full-blown joint operation. These were the terms that Tim had expected. “Didn’t think otherwise.”

Effie tucked her feet under her, cross-legged. “So what’s this project?”

This was the hardest part: he couldn’t mention Ziva’s name, couldn’t give Effie anything that might hint that this off-the-books project had anything to do with Ziva. There was never going to be a day when Ziva wasn’t a person of interest to the Israeli intelligence community. “I have a name. He’s involved in blood diamonds. I need to know if any of his trails lead to the Central African Republic.” The official story was that Eli David had died of a heart attack. Effie had no reason to know otherwise - and even if she did, she had no reason to know the details.

There was always a chance that Clive Goddard would bring up Bodnar’s name, in which case Effie just might string him up and hand him to Anat’s bosses for what he’s gotten her into, but Tim was betting on Bodnar having buried his own trail - and on Effie not digging up anything she didn’t absolutely have to. Effie wasn’t Anat.

There was also always the chance that Clive Goddard’s wasn’t the trail that had led Ziva to the Central African Republic, but if that was the case then Tim had nothing.

“Your lead, is he dead or alive?” Effie asked.

Tim shook his head. “Dead. But it was quiet.” For a certain definition of ‘quiet’; the raid on the safehouse had left him with ringing ears, but Goddard’s death hadn’t left much of an intel footprint, which was the part that Effie cared about.

Effie nodded, set her feet on the floor again, and tossed him the insulator bag which held his phone. “All right. Let’s go find a tourist spot with good wifi. Lots of tourist spots with good wifi.”

 

* * *

 

_08:00_

 

At eight in the morning, Gibbs lost his patience. Earlier that morning he’d arrived to an empty office. It was disappointing, if less than it could be: McGee had left him a message stating he’d be keeping Mejaled’s girlfriend out of the office for the weekend. Gibbs approved of that particular plan. He hadn’t failed to notice how McGee twitched whenever the girlfriend came out of the main room, or that he’d stopped just short of confiscating her phone, which was one of those computer-phones.  As for Dorneget, he’d showed up not too long after Gibbs. Between that and the way he’d risen up to the occasion on the days before, Gibbs satisfied himself with staring Dorneget down.

DiNozzo never showed up. Neither did Mejaled.

DiNozzo picked up on the first ring. “Wow, Boss, how come you only came in now?”

“I didn’t only come in now, DiNozzo. I was here an hour ago.”

“And here I was sure you’d call as soon as you arrived and saw that I wasn’t there.”

“Where are you, DiNozzo?”

“Arlington, Gibbs.”

If Gibbs strained his ears, he could indeed hear the sounds of a street in the background.

DiNozzo continued. “Anat identified the person who set off the fireworks, and we’re backtracing her now.”

“Her?”

“Woman with a sun hat. I left the file on Dorneget’s desk, she was on one of the tapes handed to him yesterday.”

Those would be the tapes Gibbs had hoped to get Dorneget some experience on, before that lawyer had dropped the bomb and Anat had turned around. Gibbs shifted the phone a little aside from his mouth and barked: “Dorneget!”

Dorneget jumped. “Yes, Boss?”

“Woman in a sun hat?”

“Yeah, Tony left some sort of a note on that folder?”

“Well, hand it over, Dorneget.”

“Sorry, Boss.”

Gibbs accepted the folder with a scowl and returned his attention to the phone. “What are you back in Arlington for, and why is Mejaled with you?”

“Our woman is in a _sun hat,_ Gibbs. Her face isn’t showing on any frame in the footage we already have, so we went out to get us some more footage. We’re tracing this woman’s steps, collecting footage along the way and hoping like hell that she screwed up at some point. And Anat is here because we need to figure out this woman’s trail as we go and frankly, _Boss,_ Anat’s much better at this than I am.” Tony’s voice went hard at the last part.

Gibbs bit his tongue. He didn’t like any of this, but he _did_ raise his people to be independent and take initiative, DiNozzo was following the only solid lead they had so far, and Mejaled really did have a knack for all things involving maps. So instead of what he originally intended to say, all Gibbs actually said was: “Make sure she remembers where she’s at, DiNozzo.”

“No such problem. She’s here for the footage and rather locked on.”

Gibbs remembered what a locked-on Mejaled looked like. The memory of the set of her shoulders, the expression on her face as she’d briefed Sam Hanna came back to him, easing the knot of anger that has been laying heavily behind his ribs since the day before. “Keep me in the loop,” he told DiNozzo.

“I’ll call you if we have anything,” DiNozzo agreed.

In the background, Gibbs could just barely make out Anat’s voice snapping: “ _When_ we have something.”

He shook his head, and hung up.

 

* * *

 

_10:30_

 

Dorneget grabbed his phone without looking at it first. “NCIS, Agent Dorneget speaking.”

“I know it’s you speaking, Dorneget, I called you,” said DiNozzo’s voice through the speaker. Dorneget straightened on instinct upon recognizing the senior agent’s voice. It took him another second to recognize the tone of DiNozzo’s voice.

They caught a break.

“I just sent you a file,” DiNozzo continued.

Dorneget refreshed his inbox automatically. “I’m not see- there it is.” He double-clicked on the attachment.

“That’s our woman. Start with the DMV database, current working hypothesis is that she’s local. Either that or she _seriously_ did her homework, because she sure knows her way around.”

Dorneget squinted at the photo, obviously a screen capture from a security camera. “Isn’t it a little fuzzy?”

“Jee, and here I thought every 7-11 had full HD security cameras. Take it to Abby if it’s not good enough, she’ll fix it right up. Actually - take it to Abby anyway. It’ll make her feel better.”

It was Saturday and he would have to _call_ Abby, but DiNozzo was right - Abby was more likely to resent him for trying to do what she perceived as her job then for being called in on the weekend.

“I’ll get right on it.”

“That’s my boy. See you in - well, we’re going to have to walk to the car first. We’re definitely going to need another round of Coolattas.”

“All right, see you soon.”

Gibbs was staring at him when he put the phone down. Dorneget could feel it.

“I take it we have a photo?” Gibbs demanded.

“Yes, and I’m just about to run it through facial rec.” He was going to follow on DiNozzo’s recommendation and call Abby, but cleaning up the photo would take hours; he could start a search with the current photo in the meantime.

“How fuzzy is it?”

“I’m not sure how bad it is, yet. I don’t have a lot of experience with -”

Gibbs granted dismissively. “Just get on it. Call Abby if you need her.”

“I think I can manage, Agent McGee had been showing me how to -”

“Just do it already, Dorneget.”

“On it, Boss.”

 

* * *

 

_10:50_

 

They were almost back to the car when Tony’s phone rang. “DiNozzo,” he answered, and then after a moment handed it to her. “Fornell for you.”

Luckily, she already had her chocolate slush in her left hand. She took the phone. “Just how bad is it?”

“You tell me,” Fornell said. “The trigger on the bomb that killed Ziyad Hussain matched against your database. It appears that our bomber is an Ibrahim Tawil.”

For a moment, Anat drew a blank. She slurped on her slush, thinking. Tawil - it had to have been over four years since he was last active; she was certain of her knowledge of everything that had come after Cast Lead, which made sense if he was a bomb-builder on file - it’d been forever since the Strip had pulled off a successful bombing. But no, that felt wrong. Something about the name _Tawil_ was off. She knew that name. But did she know it from Hussain’s file, or from -

 _No way._ Her lopsided career track was being useful for a change. She’d been a twenty-years-old lieutenant not yet out of her draft period the last time that _Ibrahim Tawil_ had been a big name. It’d been forever since they’d lost track of him, and her amazement was audible in her voice as she said: “The last entry in that file has to be from ‘06.”

“Oh, good,” Fornell said, sarcasm dripping from every word. “So we weren’t given partial records. I was beginning to wonder.”

“Zayin ba’ayin,” she retorted, because he earned it and she liked him enough.

“You do realize that ‘zayin’ is the one word I know in Hebrew other than ‘shalom’ and ‘chaver’, yes?”

“Add one more: lech la’azazel. And we need that lawyer called back in.”

“I’d say that’s two more but actually, I also know that other one, even if I can’t pronounce it for the life of me. Now give me DiNozzo back.”

She handed DiNozzo his phone back. “Yeah,” he said into it, automatically, and then: “Fifteen minutes,” which had to be when he expected them to be back at the office, and lastly: “See you there.” He hung up and looked at her. “So how screwed are we?”

“Ask me again in fifteen minutes.”

 

* * *

 

_11:20_

 

“Fifteen minutes,” Tony declared as he and Anat stepped out of the elevator and into the bullpen. It was more like seventeen, but it wasn’t like anybody was counting other than Gibbs and himself - and possibly Fornell, who was already there. “So, how screwed are we?”

“Not at all if Abu Al'aarb Narr'bah got himself caught on camera,” Anat shot back.

“He has a child called Aarb Narr'bah?” Dorneget asked.

“No, that’s a nom de guerre,” Fornell said. “Aarb Narr'bah means ‘fireworks’.”

“Al’aarb Narr’bah,” Anat corrected, her accent coming through rich and strong.

“So he’s the Fireworks Daddy,” Tony said. He dropped his stuff at his desk, but didn’t sit down. It looked as if they were having this meeting standing up in the aisle. “I take it he made a lot of things go boom.”

“He sent half a dozen people to meet their 72 virgins during the Second Intifada,” Anat agreed. “He’s got over 80 counts of murder to his name.”

“Big fish,” Gibbs said.

Anat nodded once. “Hussain burned him all the way back in - ‘07, I think, but we had to let the Palestinian Authority arrest him. They didn’t particularly want to hold on to him and they definitely didn’t want to hand him over, so they made a circus out of it and then he disappeared.”

“Six years ago,” Gibbs stated.

Anat met his gaze. “Yeah.”

“I hate to ask this, but were you even legal in ‘07?” Fornell asked.

“First Lieutenant,” she shot back.

“How old were you?” Tony asked.

“Twenty.”

He looked over at Fornell. “So, no, she wasn’t fully legal.”

“Your country lets people drive at 16 and don’t even get me _started_ on your gun laws,” Anat snapped back.

Judging by Dorneget’s face he was thinking about what he’d been doing when he’d been 20 years old, which, yeah: was a lesson you had to learn fast when working with Israelis.

“How did he ever end up here?” Gibbs asked, pulling the conversation back on track. Tony was surprised - and then surprised at his own surprise.

“Through Jordan, probably,” Anat said.

 _Jordan_ made drop the penny that _Palestinian Authority_ had triggered. Tony raised his hands. “Wait, hold up. Tawil was living in the West Bank?”

Anat gave him the flat _I am dealing with Stupid Americans_ stare that Israelis probably had patented. “Yes.”

“And Hussain was from the Gaza Strip,” Dorneget said, which, upside, made Tony out to be not the only Stupid American in the room and, downside, made Tony comparable with the probie.

“And once upon a time the Blockade was reserved for special emergencies and wasn’t the default state of things,” Anat shot back. “The Hussain family is originally from the Bank; they got trapped in the Strip when Fatah and Hamas had their falling out. Speaking of, who do you _think_ runs Hamas in the Bank since we razed them to the ground?”

“The Gaza leadership?” Dorneget offered hesitantly.

Anat fixed him with the same stare.

“And that was a rhetorical question, probie,” Tony supplied helpfully. Really, Dorneget was dealing with things exceptionally well so far. Tony might have to get him a cookie if he kept this up. “So, that settles the question of how Hussain and Tawil knew each other, and how Hussain knew about Tawil. Which makes our next question, how did Tawil know to go after Hussain?”

“He had six years to think about who could’ve burned him,” Anat pointed out.

“Any chance he could be talking to someone back in the Bank?” Fornell asked. “Or in the Gaza Strip?”

“Not on any electronic channel, but it’s going to be _fun_ for every asset in there today.”

“They’ll be told to lay low?” Dorneget asked.

 _Oh Dorni, you’re so innocent sometimes._ But Tony didn’t say that out loud; he didn’t need to.

“No,” Anat said, pulling the vowel. “They’ll be called in to deal with some questions that seriously need answering.”

“An asset’s life is worth only as much as the intel they bring in.” Fornell shrugged. “Ugly, but true.”

“He should never have known that Hussain was here,” Gibbs said. “Particularly as Hussain never used his real name anywhere except in his Asylum paperwork.”

Gibbs was significantly less angry than he’d been the day before - hell, he was significantly less angry than he’d been that morning - but the look he gave Anat was still accusatory.

Mercifully, Anat seemed unfazed. “If he wanted to be safe, he could be living in Israel right now. The offer had been made to him. He chose to run.”

“Right now we have no way to know how Tawil found him out,” Fornell said. “Hopefully Anna Herman can shed some light on that.”

“How soon will she be here, again?” Tony asked.

Gibbs scowled. “Not soon enough.”

 

* * *

 

_11:30_

 

Effie lowered her laptop’s cover and pushed it away across the stone bench with a deliberate growl. “There are _far_ too many Grolim dropping red gold all over Arendia, funding far too many skirmishes.”

“There were no Grolim in Arendia,” Tim replied automatically.

Effie looked at him. Tim made a face as he finally realized what she’d said. They should’ve probably coordinated the code, but they didn’t. Blood diamonds and red gold were an easy connection for her to make, though, and everyone knew the Belgariad.

“More coffee?” she asked.

Tim made a face again. “Actually, I think I’m about ready to kill for a green salad.”

“Lettuce is _not food._ ” She didn’t _actually_ have moral objections to the consumption of lettuce, but Tim kept making serves for her to return.

“Well, neither is coffee, no matter how much cream and sugar we put in it.”

Effie reached for her water bottle, and waited for Tim to get back on track.

After a moment, he said: “So, too many Grolim in Arendia. I suppose we need to figure out if they answer to Asharak, Ctuchik or Urvon.”

“Or Agachak, if we’re really unlucky.”

“No, if we’re really unlucky it’s Zandramas.”

“The Mallorean is not canon.”

“Just because you hate it doesn’t make it not canon,” Tim shot back.

“Either way, the question is which Disciple or High Priest has business in Arendia. In this particular region of Arendia,” she amended.

“Or a recent enough interest,” Tim muttered. “I think I’d better take this part.”

This was the kind of a job that better suited Tim’s skill set than hers, yes, but Effie suspected that what Tim meant was that this part of the job required knowledge he’d rather not share with her. She was absolutely fine with that; they were both pushing the envelope with this. She placed a single finger on top of the laptop lid and closed it the rest of the way, engaging the auto-sleep. “Fine with me.”

“I don’t suppose you would…”

“Get us more coffee?”

He looked at her.

She looked back at him, making her eyes as wide as she possibly could, even as she put the laptop in her bag.

“You are the only person in this world who is _possibly_ worse than Tony,” Tim muttered.

She slung her bag over her shoulder and pushed herself up. “He’s your best friend, so I suppose that’s a compliment.”

“Just get me food that isn’t going to clog my arteries while you get yourself a heart attack in a cup.”

“Yes, because your diabetes in a cup is so much healthier,” she tossed behind her shoulder.

He called after her: “And don’t ‘accidentally’ switch the chili sauce for the vinaigrette, please.”

 

* * *

 

_12:00_

 

“You have new questions. Which means you have new information,” Herman stated as soon as he closed the conference room’s door behind them.

Gibbs acknowledged that with a nod as he came around the table to pour them both coffee. Hussain had been Herman’s client, and now he was dead. Cooperating with the investigation was Herman’s best - and now only - chance to have justice for her client, and she seemed to understand that. There was no need to play hardball with an intelligent witness who _wanted_ to cooperate. He slid her cup across to her and sat down. “Rahim put a lot of effort into concealing his old identity,” he said, using the name Herman preferred to use for her client, the name that meant _Mercy._ “Do you know if he had any particular reason to fear being discovered?”

“He honestly didn’t believe the Israelis would harm him, even if they abandoned him,” she said. “But he was concerned about other Palestinians, very much so. It seemed excessive to me so I called him out on it, once. So he told me...” She paused. Her eyes widened.

“He told you, what?”

“He told me that about two months after he had arrived here, he thought he saw someone he used to know walking across the street. He hadn’t seen that man for years and it was only for a moment, but it was someone who used to be a friend, before Rahim had turned him in - it was someone who could potentially know… Do you think it was him?”

“Did he tell you that man’s name?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember what it was?”

“Rahim only told me that man’s first name, but yes, I remember it. It was a Biblical name; the man Rahim saw was called Ibrahim.”

 

* * *

 

_12:30_

 

Following Anat to the break room turned out to be a good call. Tony entered it just in time to find her dragging a chair to the counter.

“Somebody moved your coffee?” he asked.

The glare she levelled at him was totally a play-glare. “Are you going to help or not?”

“What do you think?” he retorted as he opened a cupboard. Effie had left the instant coffee on the counter, which Anat could actually reach, but he wasn’t terribly surprised that someone had moved it to the overhead cupboards. He guessed right - the instant was in the first cupboard he opened.

Two tins. Huh. He brought out both the Jacobs and the smaller, Hebrew-inscribed metal tin which looked similar, but not quite identical, to the tin that Tony remembered.

Anat picked the metal tin. Tony was only a little surprised - and rather pleased - that she grabbed a second cup off the rack. He fetched the milk from the fridge while Anat set up the electric kettle.

The brown powder in the cups was sand-like, like Tony remembered it, but the texture was a bit different. He picked up a cup and sniffed. Smelled different, too. “Is this chocolate-flavored?”

“Mekupelet,” Anat corrected.

The word sounded vaguely familiar. Ziva must’ve mentioned it, long ago. “Isn’t it a kind of chocolate?”

“It’s folded-over, yeah.”

Now Tony remembered it. “Oh god, it’s that crumbly stuff.”

Anat’s face lit up. “Yes.”

The kettle clicked. Anat poured boiling water into both cups, leaving ample room for milk.

“So when did you quit smoking?”

She gave him a non-comprehending look.

“You didn’t smoke once all morning,” he pointed out.

“It’s a stress thing.”

“Not-smoking is a stress thing?”

“Smoking is a stress thing.” She went around him to put the milk back in the fridge.

Tony picked up one cup and took a careful sip. “Huh. It really does taste like that chocolate.”

“People kept telling Elit that they’re putting mekupelet in their coffee, so Elit gave up and made coffee with the chocolate in it.”

“It’s nice,” he admitted. He took another sip. “And I would’ve never thought you’re less stressed now if you hadn’t said so.”

She picked up her own cup. “Why?”

“Well, you’re a lot more confrontational, for one.”

“Yes, and?” She took a sip from her coffee.

“Right, Israeli attitude.”

To his surprise, she shook her head. “Do you think I got a command post because I’m a good analyst?”

“You mean you didn’t?”

“I spend a lot less time working the intel then I did before. My job now is not working the data, it’s working the people. I have a desk full of good people. I just need to let them do what they’re good at and listen when they say what they need from me. It’s everyone _else_ being a headache.”

“And that’s somehow less stressful?”

She huffed, and then sobered up. “Now it’s my _right_ to yell at people when someone’s not being treated right.”

He thought about that for a moment. “Yeah, okay. That does actually sound less stressful, when you put it like that.”

She raised her cup. “To responsibility.”

“Seriously?” He raised his eyebrows at her, but ultimately clicked his cup against hers when she didn’t budge. “To responsibility.”

 

* * *

 

_13:00_

 

“And that’s probably the best we can do for this photo,” Abby announced, saving the file.

“It looks better,” Dorneget said. “Doesn’t it?”

The two of them were in Abby’s lab. Dorneget had accompanied her down there when she arrived, and then made up excuse after excuse to stay. The bullpen wasn’t so bad today, but he much preferred sitting with Abby if he could.

With another click, Abby started a search based on the edited photo. “Yeah. Just, any more, and we might introduce artifacts. This is as good as it gets. Let’s hope it catches on something.”

“It’ll catch on something.”

“Yeah, I mean, I hope it will be _soon._ People seriously need to stop blowing things up other than, say, on Independence Day. Or in chemistry class. Or…”

“Yeah,” Dorneget agreed quickly.

“Thanks for keeping me company, Dorni. You really didn’t have to.”

“Thanks for letting me sit with you,” he said honestly. “I have so much to learn from you. And…” He glanced up involuntarily.

Abby grimaced sympathetically. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“Is it always like that, working with Israelis?”

“It’s… well, we had some cases that were a lot worse. So far nobody got kidnapped by terrorists, nobody’s cover was blown, nobody had a fight to the death in someone’s living room… Yeah, you know what, this is actually pretty good.”

“Oh god.”

Abby patted his knee. “Don’t worry. We have a face and we have a name, and as soon as we have an address on one on them, it’s _over._ Unless it turns out the Israelis really did kill Hussain, in which case things are going to get really, really ugly.”

“Do you really think Mejaled might’ve lied to us?” he asked. So far what he’s heard about Anat Mejaled really didn’t line up with what he was seeing. McGee liked Anat a whole lot, and he thought DiNozzo liked her, but he wasn’t sure where Abby stood.

She hesitated. “No, I don’t think she would’ve knowingly lied to us. Not Anat. But someone might’ve lied to her.”

He nodded.

“But,” she said, suddenly bright. “There’s nothing we can do about that right now, so - let’s go find Tony and find us some lunch.”

 

* * *

 

_14:00_

 

At first it seemed like an impossible task: there wasn’t a terrorist organization or a militia in Africa that _didn’t_ have their claws in the Central African Republic. With a recent - and violent - regime change, the Central African Republic was the hottest party south of the Sahara. Effie’s forensics on Clive Goddard narrowed it down, but it was still a daunting list. Until Tim remembered one thing: whoever was on Goddard’s other side, it was someone that Bodnar had felt comfortable working with.

It was a bet. Tim knew enough about men like Bodnar to know that Bodnar might’ve gotten in bed with anyone, if it served a purpose and he thought he could control the situation. But the thing was, Bodnar hadn’t done what he did to hurt his country. He hadn’t done it for money, either. He’d done it because he had genuinely believed that what Eli David was doing was dangerous. It was important for Bodnar to believe that he hadn’t gone rogue, that he was protecting his country. Bodnar wouldn’t have done something that might’ve condemned him if he had any choice about it.

That struck out most of the list. Anyone so much as rumored to be associated with Al Qaeda, the Islamic Courts Union or any of their ilk was someone that Bodnar was significantly less likely to associate himself with in any way. This was a much shorter list.

And one of them made terrifying sense.

“I think it’s Zandramas,” he said, and then startled at himself. He hadn’t meant to say that out loud. The coffee shop he and Effie were presently sitting at was quite busy. At least he’d spoken up in code.

Effie looked up at him from whatever she was doing - Tim thought that it was work and not a game campaign but he wasn’t sure. “Why Zandramas?”

“Because Eriond is a Jesus Christ expy. Okay, so it’s totally upside-down but -”

Effie raised a hand. “I understand. I think. She’s the only one on that list with that association, that’s what you mean.”

Tim nodded. Zandramas served the Dark Prophecy, not the Light Prophecy, but Zandramas was the only villain of that grade originating from the Mallorean rather than the Belgariad - and the Mallorean was where the Christian content was.

Africa had Christian terrorists, too. And if Bodnar wanted someone who would be allies against any kind of Muslims, let alone suspected Mahdists -

Tim pulled out his cell phone, typed the name into a new text message, showed it to Effie and deleted it as soon as she nodded. Then he watched her face as she ran the name on her own machine.

Google and Wikipedia would suffice. Africa had numerous Christian terrorists, but only one of them had the resources and the superstar status. Coincidentally, his organization was also the one striking out the most violently against the Central African Republic’s new Muslim rulers.

Effie’s lips pressed into a thin line. She looked up at him. “This is why I like my current job better.”

Tim looked down at his own screen, from which the list of Philippe Marchand’s crimes stared back at him. “I hear you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- “Zayin ba’ayin”: Literally, “A dick in the eye”. Idiomatically, “Fuck [appropriate pronoun’s] life.”
> 
> \- “Lech la’azazel”: Lit., “Go to Azazael”. Idiomatically, “Go to Hell”.
> 
> \- “Shalom, chaver”: “Goodbye, friend.” (Could also be “Hello, friend”, but:) What Bill Clinton said at Yitzchaq Rabin’s funeral. Was a very popular bumper stick in Israel for about a decade after.
> 
> \- Grolim etc.: Grolim are the priests of the evil god Toraq in David and Leigh Eddings’ book series, Belgariad and Mallorean. The various names Tim and Effie drop are senior priests and disciples. Arendia is a Medieval Europe-style kingdom with a millennia-old civil war between two ethnic factions; Effie used it as a reference to the Central African Republic because of the nature and apparent hopelessness of the conflict.
> 
> \- [Mekupelet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mekupelet). It has an iconic status. [Mekupelet instant coffee](http://images3.mysupermarket.co.il/Products_1000/48/033448.jpg?v=2%22) is a real thing, with the origins story given in-fic.


	5. A Lighter Shade of Grey

_“The years, short on paper,_   
_Carve long lines into your face_   
_Today, the monochrome of my reflection_   
_Seems a lighter shade of grey”_

_-[ What Remains](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zZzF7OweL8), Idan Amedi_

 

* * *

 

_Saturday, 17 August, 14:30_

 

It was the weekend, and he was supposed to be home with his children. It was the weekend, but an asylum-seeker had been blown up not fifteen minutes from the Navy Yard and Gibbs and his team were right in the middle of the storm, again. Leon wanted to spend every minute he possibly could with his children, but he couldn’t afford to not be there to intervene if Anat Mejaled threatened to withdraw Israeli cooperation from the case again. So Leon packed his children, their books and toys, and extra sweets, and set up camp in the conference room. Jared was still young enough to be excited about this, even if he was a little disappointed at how empty everything was at daddy’s work on Saturday. Kayla, on the other hand, had given Leon a long look and an extra hug.

Help came from an unexpected direction: Tobias Fornell has shown up with his own daughter in tow. Leon wasn’t sure if it was Tobias or Emily that he was more grateful for. The two girls took to each other immediately, and Jared’s good-natured complaints did nothing to put a dent in his sister’s suddenly improved mood. For his part, Tobias had given Leon one look and then declared himself to be on babysitting duty - going so far as to take the kids out to find some lunch - and so freeing Leon up for the _other_ babysitting duty, now that Gibbs and Mejaled were in the same room again.

Leon was standing up on the mezzanine, leaning against the railing and nursing a cup of tea he had made out of sheer boredom. He wasn’t particularly fond of tea, though he wasn’t particularly unfond of it either and could enjoy it, if it was good. Which this tea was; but Leon had only bothered because it took a little more work to make than pouring a cup from a coffee machine’s pot.

Tony DiNozzo came upstairs, walking quietly and gingerly carrying a too-full cup. Vance gave that cup a second look as DiNozzo approached: it had cream or milk in it.

“Is that Israeli coffee?”

DiNozzo shrugged carefully. “It’s chocolate-flavored. Just don’t say that next to Anat, you’ll get a lecture about the specific kind of chocolate.”

Vance swallowed a smile. “I never thought I’d see the day when Israelis put stock in flavored coffee.”

“Maybe we’ll make civilised people out of them yet, huh?”

Vance raised his eyebrows. “Your words, not mine.”

DiNozzo shrugged self-consciously. “I think they got it all out of their system yesterday,” he said, quietly enough that it had to be deliberate. “They were due, anyway.”

“Were they?”

“She’s an officer, Director. Gibbs was always going to snap at her, even if he likes her better than most.”

“The IDF doesn’t quite has the same NCO-officers tension that other militaries do,” Vance noted, mostly to see what DiNozzo would say in reply.

“Sometimes that just means she doesn’t know where the landmines are.”

DiNozzo’s tone shifted subtly, which made Vance take note. He hadn’t heard that tone in a while; it’d been a while since he heard DiNozzo protecting Gibbs. _Or perhaps it’s been a while since you were willing to take Gibbs to task, Leon._ He’d been turning a blind eye to a lot of things in the months following Jackie’s and Eli’s deaths. The aftermath of their confrontation with Orly Elbaz, as well as Parsons’ accusations, had forced Vance to take stock of his actions. He’d _encouraged_ Ziva David to chase Bodnar and his associates, for crying out loud; once upon a time he would’ve confronted both Gibbs and her and called them to task about it.

DiNozzo’s had been the one responsible voice, all these months. And now DiNozzo was defending Gibbs to Vance again, and that made Vance consider his thoughts and actions of the past two days.

“Is that your take on things?” he asked.

DiNozzo looked away, jaw clenched. The answer was clear as day: no, it was not. It was his loyalty speaking. Perhaps that loyalty was what Gibbs wanted from him, but Vance was a lot more interested in what DiNozzo thought other than that.

“He’s a stubborn man,” Vance said carefully. “Sometimes even when he shouldn’t be.”

The look DiNozzo gave him wasn’t fooled in the least. “He’s not the only one, Sir.”

Well. It’d been a long while since he’d seen _this_ side of DiNozzo. “No, he’s not,” Vance acknowledged.

DiNozzo considered him for another moment, and then looked away again. “He doesn’t like spook-work, even when it doesn’t involve Israelis. He shouldn’t go off again, provided this case won’t have any more nasty surprises for us.” DiNozzo paused, giving both of them the chance of appreciate the chances of that ever happening. “You know what’s killing me, though? Do you know what they’re doing right now?”

Vance looked down. Gibbs and Mejaled were each at a desk - Mejaled had taken over McGee’s, since it wasn’t hidden behind a bulkhead and was available for the day - and were firmly absorbed each in his or her own stack of papers. “Other than ignoring each other?”

“Ignoring each other and pretending to not be, but yeah.”

“I have no idea.”

“They’re going over the case. Again.”

Vance let his surprise show. “They actually agreed on a course of action.”

“They just forgot to mention it to each another.”

“I see.” And he did. “Thank you.”

It was now obvious that DiNozzo had come to give him this status update. However, update delivered, DiNozzo still wasn’t going anywhere.

Interesting.

“You know how Abby complains when things change, Director?” DiNozzo asked suddenly. He was looking out over the bullpen.

“I do,” Vance acknowledged.

“She’s not the only one who doesn’t deal well with change.” DiNozzo turned his head to look at him. “And there’d been a lot of changes lately.”

_Well._ That was certainly the closest that DiNozzo had ever come to criticising Gibbs to Vance’s face. “There were,” he agreed. He studied DiNozzo closely. “And maybe there should be more.”

DiNozzo’s expression shuttered, but it seemed pensive more than anything. “Maybe,” he agreed. “Can we continue this conversation at some other time, Director?”

“Certainly,” Vance agreed. He forced himself to not watch DiNozzo’s back as the agent walked back downstairs; DiNozzo would be able to tell, and Vance had no intention of risking what he may have just gained.

Vance had a problem to solve in his MCRT unit; if not now then soon enough, because mandatory retirement wasn’t too far out in the future for Jethro Gibbs. And if Tony DiNozzo was finally ready to step up, then Vance’s options had just changed for the better.

 

* * *

 

_15:00_

 

“And then I was like, are you for real? Because this shadow is not going in the same direction of the light, mister.”

“And what did he say?”

“ _He_ didn’t. Gibbs did. ‘You have the right to remain silent’...”

Abby and he were sitting in Abby’s lab, a slowly lengthening line of empty Caf-Pow cups before them. No one had come to fetch Ned back upstairs so far, and Ned was in no hurry to return to the bullpen. He had nothing to do there that couldn’t wait until Monday, and Abby had been regaling him with case stories, demonstrating her image manipulation and analysis skills in the process. It was practically a workshop, and it came with none of the usual stress associated with one.

This was turning out to be not such a bad way to spend a Saturday after all, though Ned would still prefer it if he could spend Sunday elsewhere. That wasn’t up to them, though. With Tawil having left no footprint for them to trace, they were stuck waiting on facial rec turning up a match for the unknown woman. And until that happened, there was nothing to do but wait.

“Mm.” Abby slurped loudly on her Caf-Pow; it was near empty, judging by the sound. “Did I tell you about -”

The search pinged. Ned and Abby scrambled over to that workstation. A face looked back at them from the screen: the woman with the sun hat, now in colour. Her hair was as light as Abby said it would be, and she had so many freckles. She didn’t look like a woman who would be aiding a Hamas terrorist, and yet she probably did.

“Heather Draper,” Abby read out loud. She dropped the file into the shared folder and turned around. “Let’s go tell Gibbs.”

 

* * *

 

“We have her,” Abby announced as she strode into the bullpen, Dorneget in her wake. “Heather Draper, 28 -”

Tony pushed himself up from his chair. “Hold that thought,” he told her. “I’m going to get Fornell and the director.”

“But -” she looked at Gibbs.

“Joint investigation, Abby,” he reminded her. “And the FBI will be supplying the strike team.”

“Right, so Fornell needs to know and there’s no reason to go over things twice,” Abby agreed, but it had a note of sullenness to it that Anat didn’t like.

She’d heard about Abby, and all of it good things, but she’d only spent about a minute with the woman the last time she was here, and it didn’t escape Anat’s notice that Tim had not gone out of his way to have his two best friends spend any more time together.

Abby turned to Tim’s desk, but then spotted Anat and paused.

“What are you doing at Tim’s desk?” she asked suspiciously.

“Working,” Anat said shortly as she pushed herself up and stepped back from the desk. “And not touching his computer.” Except she was pretty sure that the ugly expression on Abby’s face had more to do with Anat sitting at the actual desk, then with the possibility of her having accessed systems which she was not supposed to.

Thankfully, Abby didn’t say another word.

Vance came down the stairs first. DiNozzo returned a moment later, accompanied by Fornell and three teenagers, two of whom were clearly Vance’s.

“Why don’t you all go to the break room,” Vance told the kids, in what sounded like a suggestion but clearly wasn’t.

“But Dad -” protested the boy, the youngest of the lot.

“Not now, Jared,” his big sister told him, taking his head. “Dad needs to work.”

“I know,” Jared protested.

“And I’m not sure we want to know,” the sister said, more firmly. “Now come on.”

Abby only waited on the kids to make it most of the way to the break room, not all of it, before she splashed the information on the plasma and got going. “Heather Draper, 28. She really is local. Grew up here, went to college here. Georgetown. Arab Studies.”

“There’s our link,” Fornell said. “Do we have a current address?”

“We do.”

Fornell pulled out his phone. “I’ll get us a warrant.”

“I want to know _everything_ there is to know about this woman,” Gibbs said.

“And I’ll see if I can’t find Tawil, now that we have a lead,” DiNozzo said.

“Where are we staging?” Anat asked.

Fornell finished dictating the address over the phone and looked at her. “Hoover building. Need a ride?”

“Yes.” She caught sight of Dorneget’s face on the way out from behind Tim’s desk. “Dorneget.” His name was a mouthful, and _get_ came out of her mouth like a stone thrown, making him snap his head up. “Ever seen an op up close?”

“No, ma’am.”

She stopped in place. “ _What_ did you just call me?”

“Uh…”

“Just grab your gear, Dorneget,” Gibbs said.

Anat started moving again. “And don’t call me that again or I will hit you.”

 

* * *

 

_16:30_

 

Fornell stared around dubiously as he stepped out of the car. The SWAT unit swarmed around him, headed for Draper’s building. This was a no-knock, quick and dirty raid: no time to plan anything more than how to get to their target as quickly as possible. They got to the right address; next stop was Draper’s apartment.

“Why do they always have to live in the high-risers?” he asked of no one in particular.

“Because religious fanaticism doesn’t actually make people stupid,” Mejaled retorted over the radio.

“You’d be out of a job if it did.”

“You going to knock on that roof anytime today?”

“Uh, knock on the roof?” Dorneget asked, sounding nervous.

“You do realize this is not Gaza,” Gibbs said.

“I didn’t notice,” Mejaled said, very dryly.

Draper, as it turned out, lived on the third floor. Fornell showed the neighbour and her cat back into their apartment as the team secured the access to the floor and arranged themselves around Draper’s door.

The team leader glanced back at Fornell.

“Three, two, one…”

The door wasn’t flimsy, but it was no match for the ram, either.

Fornell was not even in the apartment when the shot rang out. The shouts of “Clear!” began echoing immediately after that.

“What on earth?” Fornell demanded as he strode in. The living room was to the right, immediately visible from the door. When he turned left he saw a breakfast bar turned bomber’s workbench, and on the other side of it - in the kitchen - two SWAT agents looking at something on the floor. As Fornell came around the bar, he saw that it was a man’s body.

“We have Ibrahim Tawil,” he said into the radio. He was sure the peanut gallery was just dying to know. “He’d dead.” He looked up at the SWAT agents. “What the hell happened?”

“He was reaching for something on that bench, Sir. It had cords coming out of it - could be a trigger.”

“Was it a trigger?”

The SWAT agent shook his head. “Cords weren’t connected to anything.”

_Suicide by cop. Fuck._ Tawil had remained a smart bastard to the last minute.

The rest of the team was converging back. “It’s all clear,” the leader reported. “The woman’s not here.”

Fornell grimaced. “Draper’s gone. And she’s not going to be coming back here.” He looked around. “Might as well get Scene Investigation up here and start digging.”

The SWAT lead grimaced. “Probably want to let bomb squad have the run of the place first.”

“I hate bombers,” Fornell muttered.

He must have forgotten to turn his radio off at some point because Mejaled said: “Ata gam sone dardasim?”

“And that was a lot more Hebrew than I want to know. Just how dirty was that?”

“It was blue, but it wasn’t dirty.”

“Forget I asked.”

 

* * *

 

_17:30_

 

Tim’s NCIS badge got the FBI agent to not evict him, but it didn’t get him past the tape. Tim didn’t even try to get anyone from the FBI to do anything; he just waited until he could hear Fornell’s voice, and then called out: “Uh, Agent Fornell?”

And then winced, because all conversation ceased. There was the sound of steps, and seconds later Fornell showed up in the open doorway.

“McGee?” he demanded. “What are you doing here?” Then he caught sight of who was standing next to Tim. “What is she doing here?”

“Bribing you with ice cream,” Effie said, deadpan as ever.

“Gelato,” Tim corrected - and then, naturally, wanted to kick himself.

Fornell looked between them. “Ice cream,” he repeated. “And what would I need to do to have the ice cream?”

“Hand over my workaholic girlfriend.”

“You mean hand over my content expert.”

“Your content expert who probably hasn’t eaten since breakfast. Did she get to the stage of using three languages in every sentence yet?”

“It’s only two, actually.”

“Is either of them English?”

Fornell’s expression turned alarmed in a way that suggested that Anat was speaking English still, but he was beginning to think it may not last long. Still, he said: “She’d been doing fine on feeding herself the past week.”

“Did she have a live op to play with the past week?”

Fornell transferred his attention to Tim.

“It’s good gelato, sir. I mean -”

Fornell cut him off. “Do I also need to give up Dorneget?”

Tim looked at Effie, who looked back at him. “Not if you don’t particularly want to,” Tim told Fornell.

“Deal,” Fornell said promptly. “Juarez! Try and extract Mejaled from the store room. You can have her when I see that ice cream,” he told Tim and Effie.

Effie smirked. “I’ll go get your hostage.”

 

* * *

 

_18:15_

 

Tony’s head snapped up when the elevator dinged. _Who…?_ The question was answered by the fast-paced, annoyance-tinged Hebrew that rolled out as soon as the elevator doors opened.

Fast-paced, annoyance-tinged Hebrew in two voices, and yes, there was Tim with both Effie and Anat, wearing his constipated expression. And Effie was carrying -

Tony set straighter. “Is that for me?”

“It’s for everyone,” Effie said. “Ice cream for dinner for everyone. But first choice goes to whoever helps me get _her_ in the kitchen and away from work.”

“Aval -” Anat began.

Effie looked straight at Tony. “And you’re the one who didn’t feed her all day.”

“Why is it _my_ fault?” Tony asked, but he did get up. Even if he suspected that Tim would put the gelato on his tab.

“Because I like you.”

She meant that, Tony knew. _Ladies and gentleman, Israeli Logic at his best._ “Why don’t you sit down and breathe, Tim. Let me take these off of you.”

“Gladly.”

It was a good thing that Tim and Effie had bought a _lot_ of ice cream, because they also had three teenagers to feed, even if they could give the kids smaller portions with immunity: Tony was pretty sure that they weren’t supposed to feed the Director’s kids ice cream in lieu of dinner.

Not that Tony was in charge of distributing the ice cream. Effie gave the first bowl to Anat - who suddenly discovered that she was, in fact, starving - and arranged Tony a cone. Two cones, actually.

“Is all this for me?” he asked, receiving and inspecting the cones. “Rainbow sprinkles? Is there a hidden message in that?” Not that Tony was complaining, particularly as he got both fudge and sprinkles.

“Yes. The one with the mint is Tim’s. Go take him on a walk.”

Tony almost asked why, and then remembered just what Tim and Effie had been doing all day. _Oh._

“Not my type,” he informed her, but he turned around, trying to ignore the sound of giggling girls on his way to the bullpen.

And yes, Effie and Tim had coordinated this, because Tim got up as soon as he saw the cones.

Gibbs looked up.

“Ice cream break, Gibbs!” Tony told him with cheerfulness that sounded less forced than it was. “Be back later.”

They made it almost all the way to the ground floor before Tim hit the emergency stop button. “Philippe Marchand,” he said without preamble.

“That sounds familiar.”

“Leader of the Lord’s Liberation Brigades.”

_That_ sounded familiar. “Aren’t those the militias pillaging their way across Africa?”

“Pillaging, and raping and murdering,” Tim agreed. “And kidnapping kids to use on their front lines.”

“That makes Marchand that guy that Delta keeps failing to capture.”

“Them among others,” Tim agreed. His bitterness was obvious.

“Him. He’s the one? The one that Ziva is after?”

“He was the one holding the other end of the leash that Clive Goddard was on. Which, yes, makes him Bodnar’s real partner in crime.”

“Marchand,” Tony repeated.

“Yes. He’s a big fish.”

“Because when did Ziva ever do anything small,” Tony said, and now his own voice was bitter. He turned his attention to his ice cream instead.

Tim snorted in reply. It was another moment before he said: “There is no way this can end well.”

The past half a year rushed up. God, the ice cream was a good idea. It was such a good idea. It was the only thing keeping Tony more-or-less civil as he snapped: “You think? Gee, I would have never thought. Where were you the past half a year, Tim? Oh, right: feeding Ziva intel, feeding _this._ ”

“Because you’re one to talk, Tony.”

“Me?”

“How far would you follow her? How far _did_ you follow her?”

Tony stared at him. “You are not seriously talking about what I think you’re talking about.”

Tim’s face was set in a stubborn expression. “This is not Ziva’s first round on the revenge train.”

“Yes, it _is._ She was _sent_ to Somalia, Tim. She was ordered there. By -” The air in the elevator felt as if it was in the 30s, making Tony’s lungs constrict painfully. “He sent her there. Knowing she might die.” Her father. Knowing she probably would. Tony tried to not think about that too often. Or at all. But sometimes, it was necessary. “And now he’s dead, and she…” And Ziva did what her father would want her to do.

Even if it would end with her death.

 

* * *

 

_18:30_

 

It was only when they returned to the bullpen that Tim realized what Tony had done. There was female laughter spilling down from the break room. It was more than one voice, but Anat was at Tim’s desk and he was pretty sure that that was not Abby’s voice he was hearing - and anyway, he never expected Effie and Abby to get along.

Tim hurried down the hallway. There was a boy sitting at one table watching something on a tablet. Jared Vance; Tim recognized him immediately. And that was his sister, the Director’s daughter, sitting on Effie’s one side, and on Effie’s other side -

It took Tim a long moment to recognize her. “Emily? Emily Fornell?” The last time he’d seen Agent Fornell’s daughter she’d been a little kid with her painting books. This was a mid-teen girl.

Effie had been left with two teenaged girls carrying wifi-enabled devices. That was bad enough. But what really made Tim worry was the expression on Effie’s face. The last time Effie had looked so smug, she’d bought Anat the domain for the largest Deep Six fansite for her birthday.

“What did you do?” he asked. “Do I even want to know?”

“We were just exchanging fanfic recs,” Effie said.

“Effie!” Emily shrieked.

“It’s okay, Em, Tim’s one of us.”

Emily gave Tim a dubious look, and suddenly Tim knew exactly what kind of fanfic the three were swapping. “I’m not sure I’d go that far,” he said. “And I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know.”

As he turned around to flee the break room, it occurred to him that this at least meant that Effie had better entertainment than hack anything.

 

* * *

 

_20:00_

 

“Hey, you. What’s your name. Dorneget.”

Dorneget lifted his head. Agent Fornell was standing at the doorway to the room where he and some of the FBI agents were still packing up Heather Draper’s life to be analyzed.

“Yes, sir?”

“Come on, I’ll give you a ride home.”

“Uh, but we’re not done here yet.”

“Jee, Dorneget, you think I’d’ve noticed,” Fornell said. He could be just as sarcastic as Agent Gibbs when he wanted to, or perhaps even more. “This is going to take a while more. I didn’t keep you here for the free labor. Well, not just for the free labor. You’re not going to learn anything more tonight.”

“I can keep going, sir,” Dorneget protested, but it was weak. He really was exhausted.

Fornell snorted. “I know how Gibbs rides his probies, and DiNozzo’s learned from him.”

“Agent DiNozzo’s much nicer than Agent Gibbs,” Dorneget said, even as he made his way across the room. “When he’s not playing any pranks, that is.”

“And what do you do when he plays pranks on you?”

“I…” Dorneget was going to give the polite answer, but something in Agent Fornell’s expression made him tell the truth. “I prank him back.” Even Director Vance had encouraged him to do so, after. The Director had even participated in and enabled Dorneget’s very first prank.

Fornell snorted again. “You’re going to do just fine. Now, where am I driving you to? Please tell me I did not just volunteer to drive out to Annapolis.”

“Uh - actually, the Navy Yard would be great, sir. I left my car there this morning.”

“Well, that’s perfect. I left my daughter there this afternoon.”

 

* * *

 

_21:00_

 

It was a good thing he’d at least had ice cream, because he wasn’t going to have anything else for dinner. He was still out of food, he’d forgotten to go grocery shopping again, and he didn’t feel like eating anyway. Not with the name _Philippe Marchand_ in the back of his head, together with the graphical evidence of the man’s crimes.

Marchand fancied himself a slayer of monsters, but he was a monster himself, a mass murderer only a chance away from genocide. Which he might yet achieve, given the situation in the Central African Republic.

Ziva was in the Central African Republic. Ziva was chasing Marchand. The sick irony of it made Tony want to hurl, or to hurl something at the wall. Ziva had sent herself to near-certain death, to avenge the man who had sentenced her to such a fate before, for no crime other than failing to obey him. But the man was her father, and love was not a rational thing.

Tony should know. Tony, of all people, should know.

Turned out he did have a packet of crackers after all. It wasn’t much, but it was better than just ice cream. Probably.

Tony munched on his crackers and thought. The last time he’d followed Ziva to hell Gibbs had been backing him up, and McGee and Abby were helping. Now Tony was reluctant to ask for Tim’s or Abby’s help. They’d helped put Ziva where she was now. Tony was aware that his resentment was possibly less than rational, but that didn’t change the fact that he couldn’t bring himself to trust them, and that there was only so much they could do, anyway. And Gibbs - yeah, it was not irrational to not trust Gibbs. Not with Ziva, not with this. Tony had no doubt that Gibbs loved Ziva, but - this wasn’t right for Ziva, this wasn’t fair to her, and on this, Gibbs seemed to have forgotten that Ziva wasn’t him.

Tony might be able to get Vance to help. Maybe. So long as he kept giving Vance what he wanted. So - Vance would turn a blind eye, as he did before, and he would help where Tony needed Gibbs’ eye to be not on him, so long as Tony kept giving Vance plausible deniability.

And Tony could do this. He could come up with a plan, again. He could figure out how to save Ziva from herself, again.

He could, if he could find his way out of this paralyzing sense of being so alone, so insignificant.

He didn’t have to be alone. Not when it came to Ziva.

Ziva didn’t trust her, would rather die than trust her - no. Tony had opened Ziva’s wardrobe. He’d seen that azure sweatshirt, on the front shelf where Ziva would always see it.

He wondered sometimes what it was like for Yael, what it was like to love someone you could never have, and guard that secret as if it was the death of you, just waiting to happen. He wondered if she felt as trapped as he did, sometimes.

Tony took a deep breath.

_You went into hell and brought her back, Tony. You make this happen, too._

He opened his computer, and got to work.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- [Roof knocking](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roof_knocking): firing a small missile at the roof of a building to get people to clear out before dropping the bigger bomb and taking the building out. Used to give civilians a chance to clear out of buildings used as weapon caches or for other combat purposes. The Hebrew term, hakesh ba’gag, is even more ironic considering that hakesh ba’delet (“door knocking”) is an annual major door-to-door fundraising non-profit campaign.
> 
> -“Ata gam sone dardasim?”: “Do you hate smurfs, too?” I don’t know what Gargamel says in English, but “Ani sone dardasim!” (“I hate smurfs!”) would be used as a generic expression of (often futile) annoyance and frustration in Hebrew. (See also: [The Smurf Trance](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-opVUN-nGs). Those of you with at least minimal Hebrew will not be surprised to learn that this is a permanent hit at school trips and military marches. “Are we there yet, Papa Smurf?” “Is it very far, Papa Smurf?” “It’s very, very far!” “I had enooooooough!”)


End file.
